Improved key to New World species of Sphecius (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae)

Abstract

The two existing keys (Fox 1895 and Bohart 2000) to the New World species of Sphecius (Dahlbom 1843) do not correctly identify a large percentage of female Sphecius convallis (Patton 1879) and Sphecius grandis (Say 1824). Both keys fail to allow for common variations in the number of gastral segments with yellow markings, and one key has the two species reversed. Here, we present an improved key that correctly identifies both sexes of >4,400 specimens of New World Sphecius, which we examined. © 2006 Entomological Society of America.