#parasitoids

BUG SPOTLIGHT: the crypt keeper wasp (Euderus set).

(Eupelmid wasp, and her host's eggs. She couldn't decide which ones she wanted. Tyranny of choice)

sometimes you need to be familiar with the taxon in question to tell whether an insect is male or female, and look at things like antennal segments, small differences in coloration, or general proportions. sometimes you find a braconid with an ovipositor the size of her entire body

Copidosoma is a polyembryionic wasp, which means many larvae can emerge from a single egg, which in their case is laid in caterpillars. The cool part is that some of these larvae are neither male nor female, but sterile workers that will never become adults, and only exist to defend their siblings by attacking competing larvae chemically AND physically.

In these photos you can see the slender, sexless soldier larvae, and the more typical looking reproductive grub, plus two example images of the soldier attacking larvae of competitor species. Again all this happens inside the eggs and bodies of caterpillars! These things aren't even rare, my boss did his dissertation on this family and described them as "common as dirt". They're used in pest control as a natural enemy. This is a very common species that exists all over the world, almost entirely unnoticed because they're just so small and inconspicuous.

They're not even the only parasitoids that have hit on this either, here's a slide I enjoyed from a PowerPoint I saw at the national ESA meeting. Tragically I have forgotten the authors of this presentation tho..

the duality of wasp asses

assorted very small wasps i saw at work last week

everyone knows about the stalk-eyed flies by now but did you hear about Axima, the genus of stalk-eyed wasps that dropped recently