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Tarantula Hawk Wasp
A tarantula hawk is a spider wasp (Pompilidae) that preys on tarantulas. Tarantula hawks belong to any of the many species in the genera ''Pepsis'' and ''Hemipepsis.'' They are one of the largest parasitoid wasps, using their sting to paralyze their prey before dragging it to a brood nest as living food; a single egg is laid on the prey, hatching to a larva which eats the still-living host. They are found on all continents other than Antarctica. Description Common species are up to long, making them among the largest of wasps, and have blue-black bodies and bright, rust-colored wings (other species have black wings with blue highlights). The vivid coloration found on their bodies, and especially wings, is an aposematism, advertising to potential predators the wasps' ability to deliver a powerful sting. Their long legs have hooked claws for grappling with their victims. The stinger of a female ''Pepsis grossa'' can be up to long, and the powerful sting is considered one of the mos ...
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Pepsis Grossa
''Pepsis grossa'' is a very large species of pepsine spider wasp from the southern part of North America, south to northern South America. It preys on tarantula spiders, giving rise to the name tarantula hawk for the wasps in the genus ''Pepsis'' and the related ''Hemipepsis''. Only the females hunt, so only they are capable of delivering a sting, which is considered the second most painful of any insect sting; scoring 4.0 on the Schmidt sting pain index compared to the bullet ant's 4.0+. It is the state insect of New Mexico. The colour morphs are the xanthic orange-winged form and the melanic black winged form. In northern South America, a third form, known as "lygamorphic", has a dark base to the wings which have dark amber median patches and a pale tip. Taxonomy and description Due in part to confusion over the distinctness of various color forms, until 2002 this species was known by the name ''Pepsis formosa'', including a subspecies ''P. formosa pattoni'', but C.R. Vardy ...
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Pepsis
''Pepsis'' is a genus of spider wasps belonging to the family Pompilidae. Species within this genus are also called tarantula hawks, as they usually hunt tarantulas, similarly to many species in the genus '' Hemipepsis''. These wasps are restricted to the Americas, with the related genus ''Hemipepsis'' occurring in both Old and New Worlds. Species Species within this genus include: *'' Pepsis achterbergi'' Vardy, 2005 *'' Pepsis aciculata'' Taschenberg, 1869 *'' Pepsis adonta'' Vardy, 2005 *''Pepsis albocincta'' Smith, 1855 *'' Pepsis amyntas'' Mocsáry, 1885 *''Pepsis apicata'' Taschenberg, 1869 *'' Pepsis aquila'' H. Lucas, 1895 *'' Pepsis assimilis'' Banks, 1946 *''Pepsis asteria'' Mocsáry, 1894 *''Pepsis atalanta'' Mocsáry, 1885 *''Pepsis atripennis'' Fabricius, 1793, 1804 *''Pepsis aurifex'' Smith, 1855 *''Pepsis auriguttata'' Burmeister, 1872 *''Pepsis aurozonata'' Smith, 1855 *''Pepsis australis'' Saussure, 1868 *'' Pepsis basalis'' Mocsáry, 1885 *'' Pepsis b ...
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University Of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868, and has been officially headquartered at the university's flagship campus in Berkeley, California, since its inception. As the non-profit publishing arm of the University of California system, the UC Press is fully subsidized by the university and the State of California. A third of its authors are faculty members of the university. The press publishes over 250 new books and almost four dozen multi-issue journals annually, in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and maintains approximately 4,000 book titles in print. It is also the digital publisher of Collabra and Luminos open access (OA) initiatives. The University of California Press publishes ...
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Paraponera Clavata
''Paraponera clavata'' is a species of ant, commonly known as the bullet ant, named for its extremely painful sting. It inhabits humid lowland rainforests in Central and South America. Etymology The specific epithet of the ant, ', means "club-shaped". The generic name, ''Paraponera'', translates to "near-''Ponera''". Due to its notoriety, the ant has several Native American, Spanish, and Portuguese local names in different geographical areas. Perhaps the best known name is the Venezuelan ' (the "24 ant" or "24-hour ant"), referring to the full day of pain that follows being stung; it can also refer to the time it takes to kill a human. In Brazil, the Portuguese names given by locals include ', ', or ' (big black ant), and Native American-derived names are ''tocandira'', ''tocandira'', and ''tocanquibira''. These names derive from the Tupi–Guarani ''tuca-ndy'', which translates to "the one wounding deeply". Other names by which it is referred include ''chacha'', ''cumanagata ...
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Schmidt Sting Pain Index
The Schmidt sting pain index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt (born 1947), an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona, United States. Schmidt has published a number of papers on the subject, and claims to have been stung by the majority of stinging Hymenoptera. His original paper in 1983 was a way to systematize and compare the hemolytic properties of insect venoms. A table contained in the paper included a column that rated sting pain, starting from 0 for stings that are completely ineffective against humans, progressing through 2, a familiar pain such as that caused by a common bee or wasp sting, and finishing at 4 for the most painful stings; in the original paper, only the bullet ant, '' Paraponera clavata'', was given a rating of 4. Later revised versions of the index added '' Synoeca septentrionalis'', along with tarantula hawks as the only species to share ...
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Antenna (biology)
Antennae ( antenna), sometimes referred to as "feelers", are paired appendages used for Sensory system, sensing in arthropods. Antennae are connected to the first one or two Segmentation (biology), segments of the arthropod head. They vary widely in form but are always made of one or more jointed segments. While they are typically sensory organs, the exact nature of what they sense and how they sense it is not the same in all groups. Functions may variously include sensing tactition, touch, air motion, heat, vibration (sound), and especially insect olfaction, smell or gustation, taste. Antennae are sometimes modified for other purposes, such as mating, brooding, swimming, and even anchoring the arthropod to a substrate (biology), substrate. Larval arthropods have antennae that differ from those of the adult. Many crustaceans, for example, have free-swimming larvae that use their antennae for swimming. Antennae can also locate other group members if the insect lives in a group, lik ...
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Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. It shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina is a federal state subdivided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and a part of Antarctica. The earliest recorded human presen ...
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Logan, Utah
Logan is a city in Cache County, Utah, United States. The 2020 census recorded the population was 52,778. Logan is the county seat of Cache County and the principal city of the Logan metropolitan area, which includes Cache County and Franklin County, Idaho. The Logan metropolitan area contained 125,442 people as of the 2010 census and was declared by Morgan Quitno in 2005 and 2007 to be the safest in the United States in those years. Logan also is the location of the main campus of Utah State University. History The town of Logan was founded in 1859 by settlers sent by Brigham Young to survey for the site of a fort near the banks of the Logan River. They named their new community "Logan" for Ephraim Logan, an early fur trapper in the area. Logan was incorporated on January 17, 1866. Brigham Young College was founded here on August 6, 1877 (and closed in 1926), and Utah State University – then called the Agricultural College of Utah – was founded in 1888. Logan's grow ...
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New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 33: "[16c: from the feminine of ''Americus'', the Latinized first name of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). The name ''America'' first appeared on a map in 1507 by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, referring to the area now called Brazil]. Since the 16c, a name of the western hemisphere, often in the plural ''Americas'' and more or less synonymous with ''the New World''. Since the 18c, a name of the United States of America. The second sense is now primary in English: ... However, the term is open to uncertainties: ..." The term gained prominence in the early 16th century, during Europe's Age of Discovery, shortly after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci concluded that America (now often called ''the ...
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Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with their associated islands, the Americas cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River–Great Lakes basin, Mississippi, and La Plata. Since the Americas extend from north to south, the climate and ecology vary widely, from the arctic tundra of Northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska, to the tropical rain forests in Central America and South America. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago. A second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later fr ...
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Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ...
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Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea wit ...
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