Here’s a tw**t sent by Matthew; your job is to guess what this thing is. At least you should be able to get the order! Answer at 12:30 Chicago time.
by Matthew Cobb
Found in the MCZ teaching collection with a note reading "holotype! please be careful!" It's certainly unique, but a holotype, this ain't… pic.twitter.com/7GGw3Uri92
— Rachel L. Hawkins Sipe (@rachl_hawk) July 14, 2017
JAC: A “holotype” is the one physical specimen of a species whose physical traits were used to describe the species. There’s only one per species, and it’s precious. Nowadays with DNA their usefulness is not as great as it once was, but museums send these things out all the time to people wanting to know whether what they’ve collected is a member of the holotype’s species.
The “MCZ” is Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, whose laboratory annex is where I did my Ph.D. research.
Diptera
I counted the wings too. But they look very very small to be functional.
I’m suspicious. I can only see one leg, and the term “arthropod” is suspiciously precise given the audience and the source(s). I’m not even going to take odds on it being a hexapod, let alone an insect.
Hmm, I wonder what it could bee.
Hymenoptera?
I think it’s a rat. At least I smell one…
Order Photoshoptera, perhaps?
Pieces glued together is my guess, since there was apparently a physical object to react to. Multiple orders involved,
Looks like a glotzoculus chimeralis, order: fluttercritter.
Musca domestica?
Diptera: Aristate antennae.
My guess, based on the comment about holotypes, is that this is a mutant fly not typical of its species.
Head: odanata
Thorax: diptera
Abdomen: hymenoptera
Wings: no clue
The wings are tough. I think the hind wings of something, but what? Mayfly, Neuropteran, or something else that is veiny.
I agree and can only guess that the wings are neuropteran, with an unusual shape?
That is amazing. Amazeballs, even.
It has to be a bunch of insects glued together, but it is well done! I remember this being done for the lab practical in my entomology lab by the TA. Holotype it ain’t, indeed.
I am no entomologist, but I thought the stripes made it look zebra-like. A google search revealed this: http://bugguide.net/node/view/418926
Tha is a pretty Syrphid fly, but I think the thorax is a flesh fly, Sarcophagidae.
That thing seems to be assembled from several different insects!
Is it a hollow type?
I posted this tweet! On close examination, it’s a bunch of parts from different insects, glued together. A head-scratcher for beginning entomologists, to be sure. So it’s “unique” but not a true holotype!