Black ants – Orange ringed abdomen & feelers
Location: New Zealand
January 23, 2011 12:42 am
Hello there Bugman. These two (obviously male & female) are the unidentified bugs. Found 400m from New Brighton beach, Christchurch, NZ on a tree.
Signature: Skunkwerx
Dear Skunkwerx,
These are Beetles, not Ants, and judging by the antennae, they are Longhorn Beetles in the family Cerambycidae. We did locate a similar looking species identified as Obrida fascialis, the One Banded Longicorn Beetle, on the Brisbane Insect website, but a web search of images with that scientific name brought up lots of images of fingernails and other human body parts and photographs of Nicole Kidman and Beyonce, leading us to believe something is terribly amiss with that identification. We hope our readers will have time to unravel this mystery while we are at work.
Update: November 11, 2012
We just approved a comment identifying the genus Zorion for this pair, and we found a matching photo on FlickRiver to support that comment.
These are common flower longhorns of the genus Zorion
Thanks for your identification.
My Grandson has just found a pair of these at his school in Hastings