March — Agapostemon sp.
Metallic green from her face to the tip of her abdomen. The males of some species have a yellow-and-black striped abdomen and look like a completely different insect.
That green is not pigment. There is no green dye anywhere in her. It is microscopic layers in the shell itself, stacked at a thickness that cancels some wavelengths and reinforces others, so what reaches your eye is green because of the structure rather than any color. It is the same physics that makes a hummingbird’s throat flare red and then go black when he turns his head.
March is when she comes up. She spent the winter underground as a mated adult, and she will spend the spring digging a burrow and provisioning it alone.
Photographed at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge by Jonathan Swanson.
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