“In the 1980s, when I was a curator at the Spencer Entomological Museum, I spent as much time as possible each summer working out of my parents’ home in Penticton, roaming the grasslands in search of the Okanagan’s entomological specialties. This is one of them—a wingless female of a rarely-encountered, nocturnal velvet ant. Velvet ants aren’t really ants; but like ants they are a type of wasp. The Okanagan Valley is at the northern tip of the great steppes of the American west, and is consequently home to many plants and animals found nowhere else in Canada.”

Syd Cannings, Species at Risk Biologist at Environment Canada.