Megascolia azurea (Megascolia azurea)

Megascolia azurea christiana I first spotted this wasp 18 years ago. A friend and I observed it coming out of a hole in the ground near a tree root. It was very worrying as it just kept coming out, more and more of it. I could have sworn it was 2” long.

In 2011, armed with a camera, I found the wasp again. Still not over my wasp phobia at that time, I was reluctant to get any closer than four feet and had one foot angled for a sprint get-a-way.

I knew that I would want a measurement, so I photographed my feet position and noted my stance. I returned with photo print-outs and a steel rule, using all the information I was able to position the camera and photographed the rule in position. Back at the lab, I overlaid the images to get a measurement – 36mm.

For a long time, I was convinced that this bug was a bee, but made no progress in the ID hunt. Finally I had a look at wasps and soon found the species under Scoliidae. Unfortunately I have not seen the wasp since. If I saw it today, I would likely scoop it up and take it home with me.

Location is Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. Scrubland.
http://www.jungledragon.com/image/38151/megascolia_azurea_christiana_539.html Bandung,Geotagged,Indonesia,Java,Megascolia azurea,Scoliidae,Spring,West Java,megascolia,scoliid wasp

Naming

Subspecies
M. a. azurea (Christ, 1791)
M. a. christiana (Betrem & Guiglia, 1958)
M. a. siamensis (Betrem, 1928)
M. a. cochinensis (Betrem, 1928)
M. a. hindostana (Micha, 1927)

References:

Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.

http://dare.uva.nl/cgi/arno/show.cgi?fid=149949

Taxonomy
Kingdom	Animalia
Division	Arthropoda
Class	Insecta
Order	Hymenoptera
Family	Scoliidae
Genus	Megascolia
Species	Megascolia azurea

Photographed in
Indonesia