[Pollinator] Fwd: Epipactis wasp

[Peter Bernhardt]

Here is another request from Kunming, China.  Professor Ren Zong-Xin
collected the following wasp a few days ago from a mineral spring in
Shangri-La "County" (Yunnan, China).  The wasp was feeding on nectar
secreted by the hypochiles of the labellum petals of helleborine orchids
(Epipactis).  Note the yellow pollinaria on the dorm of the thorax.  It was
observed visiting several flowers on one flowering stem but the site had
over 200 helleborine orchids growing around the spring.  Charles Darwin was
among the first of the 19th century naturalists to record wasps pollinating
Epipactis orchids at Torquay, England (I believe he was on holiday).

Can someone identify the wasp to genus?  The specimen has been pinned and
Dr Ren can take a good close-up with equipment in his lab.  The Ren lab is
planning on looking into the pollination of helleborine orchids at a second
site in Kunming but as at a much higher elevation where they grow in muddy,
horse pastures with native primroses.

Peter


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: 任宗昕 <renzongxin at mail.kib.ac.cn>
Date: Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 5:14 PM
Subject: Epipactis wasp
To: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>



Here is the photo of Epipactis wasp carrying pollinaria.




--

*********************************
Zong-Xin Ren, PhD

Assistant Researcher

Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia,
Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences
132 Lanhei Road, Kunming, Yunnan 650201, P. R. China
Tel: +86－871-5223534
Fax: +86－871-5217791
E-mail: renzongxin at mail.kib.ac.cn

http://renzongxinorchid.weebly.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20150610/3dcd55b5/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Epipactis wasp.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 987772 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20150610/3dcd55b5/attachment-0001.jpg>