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A TV show was announced earlier in the day, called "A Day without
Art." I thought about that a little, and began wondering just what a day without art really might be like.
Well, there is art, and there is art. I'm not an artist, surely, but during the years have
learned a few simple drafting and drawing techniques for illustrating little wasps.
Here I have a computer filled with images of little wasps, most also stored on CDs, but with
only a few up on the internet. They are skectches. And so what if I put one picture up each day, or every other day?
Would I soon answer the question, "What is a day without art?" And being mine, it is
original, for better or worse. with some fine detailed studies of topography and anatomy of the parasitics.
So be it - let's see what can happen in a day with just a little art.
I drew the specimen below exactly as it appears on the DeSantis Slide,
in balsam, only at a scale of about 3 feet by 2 feet. From then on, I managed it in Photo Shop 7. Most of this was done
on antique microscopes with camera lucida. Hard to beat 'em.
Photo Shop obviates the need for lots of fancy, expensive microscopes
IF you know how to manage oblique lighting, indirect lightng, and various filtering methods. The procedures
are antiquated now, however. For some folks.
The sketches below are of a previously undescribed genus of platygastrid,
this one reared from rose gall of willow in Alaska, by Dominique Collet. It is unique in that it is the only specimen, and
a female, and one which fits precisely none of the genera of Platygastridae that I've seen before.
I have the only specimen available, but it will eventually find it's way to the Florida State
Collection of Arthropods. I have no plan to describe it formally, there should be many more reps available before that happens.
I plan to call it "Illiamna," regardless of what nomenclatural rules may eventually apply
to it, because I believe it is a good common name and will make a good scientific name as well. It's named for a live volcano
found not far from the Sterling camp, where I uncovered it among some of Collect's reared specimens.
Below, I have included a large series of drawings made of the new genus (yet to be) "Illiamna."
Of course it won't carry this name unless some rules change in the future, but it's a good common name and I will leave it.
Rules were made to be broken.
The genus is much more complex topographically than other synopeadines, and who knows, perhaps
it's not even a synopeadine to begin with. You can see my equivocation about this in a couple of the pictures, and I
frankly am open to suggestion about it's relationships. I believe males will be needed to firm those up.
The images are archived on both my hard drive and on a CD set, as well as floppies, for anyone
who would like to study them, but there is still only one specimen. When more have been collected or reared, I can take some
liberties with the treatment, but now am severely limited in what I can do to the specimen.
Once again, however, there is no hurry to push this genus through, and certainly not enough
material to use for describing a whole genus. There is enough (1) to bring it to the attention to the entomological
community, however.
And again, the specimen was reared from rose gall of willow in Alaska.
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At the same time that I described Synopeas russelli, from the University
of Central Florida, I selected out a series of very unusual synopeadines from the same general collections. I took so long
to finish the S. russelli that I ony managed to get sketches, drawings and some measurements from this unique and as yet undescribed
species.
It is very unlikely that I will ever describe the species formally, but this would be a good
place to put in most of the artistic detail that I have archived. I can tell the world about it without really pressing
myself for a description. And I don't see any need for haste, at any rate.
So below, are some diagnostic drawings of the new and unusual synopeadines. They reside in
my collection, both male and female, and are present in sufficient numbers to study in more detail if some one wants to do
that.
I call the the superstriated synopeadine.
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