Queen was found dead on the sidewalk at Metrotech. The side-effect was that the body was collected with ants swarming the body. Queen was a large wasp which we could assume was some sort of Cicada Killer Wasp. But we didn’t know the species of the ants and we would like to verify the identity with DNA evidence.

Results

While we were expecting Queen’s sequence to come back as an Eastern Cicada Killer Wasp, given our geography, the sequence said otherwise. The result was Pacific Cicada Killer (Sphecius convallis). This data doesn’t add up and the morphology of Queen is a bit off for this finding.

Another analysis of the sequences against the ones found in BOLD will be useful. To be continued!