This Little Bug of Mine

Lessons from entomology forums on how to "do the work" locally

This free-to-use photo by Oktavianus Mulyadi depicts a wasp cleaning its head. But which wasp? He’d only included a location—Jakarta, Indonesia—but while my first hunch was a vespid, I have this compulsion when it comes to insects, to zero in on a species as best as possible. By looking at the thorax and abdomen in other photos in his series, and referr…