3
They are the halteres. These structures help the flies to perceive body rotation and maintain balance.
1
A local graduate student relayed the answer to me. It is an ootheca of a praying mantis. There is some additional background on the egg life history here. Wikipedia reports there are three mantid species. The upper-left picture of the ootheca here is essentially what I observed, so we may be looking at the genus Stagmomantis. There are some other great ...
1
This is an ant in the genus Camponotus. It can only be identified from the habitus on your picture, but clues are that there is only one element between the thorax and the gaster (Formicinae) and the head is large, this with the color and texture pattern leads to Camponotus sp.
Refer to
Bolton, B., Alpert, G., Ward, P. S., & Naskrecki, P. (2006). ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
