Further to Monday’s post, the unknown wasp I had originally taken to be a fly (hence the thinko “unknown fly” at one point in that post) turns out to be, as expected after perusing Kaufman’s Field Guide to Insects of North America (it’s not mentioned in Evans’ National Wildlife Federation guide, which I much prefer, as long as the species is noted in it), one of the 11 species in the North American hymenopterofauna:
There’s a lovely page all about Evaniid wasps on the Tree of Life website, which I highly recommend browsing if you’ve got some time to kill. The image I love labels all the various waspy parts:
Although mine was blue and the pinned specimen above is brown, you can still see the salient feature that clinched the ID for me: long antennae (hence wasp, not fly) and strongly demarcated “tail piece” (metasoma in the picture above) that gives rise to the common name for this wasp family, as described on the info page at bugguide.net:
Black, somewhat spider-like. Abdomen is very small and oval, attached by a slender petiole to the propodeum, considerably above the base of the hind coxae. It is carried almost like a flag (thus the name).
There are 11 species in 4 genera in North America, and mine most closely resembles the (unidentified) picture in Kaufman’s guide.
So, pending further specific identification, I’ve at least learned something about one of our more unusual species of wasp. Yay!