#wasplove — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #wasplove, aggregated by home.social.
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Another laptop visitor, this time, a parasitoid wasp, perhaps of the kind that parasitises the hundreds of ladybugs out and about at the moment. Likely in the Eucoilinae family.
Update: not a parasitoid wasp but an oak gall wasp, tribe Cynipini. Thanks to Luis Nastasi for the identification at the tribe level.
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I haven’t posted here for a while so here is an invasive and #AsianHornet (Vespa velutina) that recorded in France this summer. This one was in the Pays de la Loire.
Yellow leg tips, dark head+thorax, thin yellow band on abdomen, yellow/orange 4th segment on abdomen.
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Quite pleased with this shot of an Urosigalphus braconid wasp I got in central Austin today. I suspect the wasps are emerging from live oak acorns, having parasitized the grubs acorn weevils.
Not many live photos exist of this genus, it seems.
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Malcolm Storey created and maintains https://www.bioimages.org.uk , a huge catalogue of high-resolution images of most animals that can be found in the British Isles, except for birds and other vertebrates.
Offers one of the most comprehensive catalogue of #Ichneumonidae images with special emphasis on macro photography to illustrate species-diagnostic features.
Malcolm has been identifying thousands of parasitoid wasps at #iNaturalist – that's how I found out. Thanks so much for all your work.
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/3839145 -
A female tarantula hawk wasp takes nectar from a horsetail milkweed at the Southwestern Research Station in Arizona.
I should do more of these dreamy natural light shots. This one was with a 200m lens on a 2x teleextender.
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@alexwild That's a lot of Chrysis!
My favourite Chrysididae is the Emerald Cuckoo wasp, Stilbum cyanurum. Always get a kick out of seeing it again, most often on mint flowers.
https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/albertcardona?view=tree&details_view=observations&taxon_id=361691 -
Parasitoid wasps FTW!
"a small parasitoid wasp Microterys nietneri was found to be successful in controlling the scale insect" that was devastating the native trees (Phylica arborea) whose fruit the bird is specialised to eat in Nightingale island, Tristan da Cunha.
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I’d add:
“Ecosystem services provided by aculeate wasps”, Brock, Cini and Sumner, 2021.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/brv.12719
#wasplove #Aculeata #wasps #Hymenoptera #EcosystemServices #entomology
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Amblyteles armatorius is quite the majestic wasp, and often seen within the city of Cambridge, UK. My latest sighting: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/222543086
#iNaturalist #wasplove #parasitoids #insects -
Ichneumonid wasp ovipositing on a lavender flower – there must be an insect larva or caterpillar inside the flower bud.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/224254567
#iNaturalist #Hymenoptera #parasitoids #wasplove #entomology #insects
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Ichneumonid wasp ovipositing inside an aphid.
Low-light conditions, a bit blurred. Was fascinating to see, as it iterated over multiple target apids and stabbed them all. Aphids didn't even attempt to run. Interestingly, only chose small aphids, even a very small one (seen in this photo at the lower left, near the posterior tip of the wing of the wasp).
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/221688390
#Hymenoptera #apids #wasplove #engomology #insects #parasitoids
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What’s up, doc?
Ichneumonoidea wasp.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213968073
#iNaturalist #Hymenoptera #parasitoid #wasplove #entomology -
Given that pretty much all insect species, and beyond into spiders and more, are attacked by parasitoid wasps, and that for most hosts there are both host-specific and generic parasitoid wasp species, it’s been estimated that there are more parasitoid wasps than all other insect species combined. Their usually cryptic larval life stages and often brief adult stages may be behind the severe undercounting.
See:
"Quantifying the unquantifiable: why Hymenoptera, not Coleoptera, is the most speciose animal order", Forbes et al. 2018 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12898-018-0176-x -
X-ray microscopy of fossil parasitoid wasps to study the evolution of echolocation for finding hosts:
"†Kryptovelona carstengroehni gen. et sp. nov. and †Orussus juttagroehnae sp. nov. are the first female members of the parasitoid wasp family Orussidae recorded from Baltic amber. We describe them, including relevant parts of the internal anatomy examined with synchrotron scanning. The fossils display a number of modifications in the antennae and foreleg correlated with the specialized host-detection mechanism, and in the ovipositor apparatus, as well as in the thorax and abdomen for accommodating the internalized ovipositor."
"By comparing the new Baltic amber taxa with †Cretorussus, it is possible to trace the progressive refinement of the echolocation mechanism through reductions in the number of antennomeres and foreleg tarsomeres."
Vilhelmsen et al. 2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae021 -
Such a stylish little Encyrtus wasp. Photographed at UT Austin's amazing Brackenridge Field Lab.
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Interesting. I have also seen a spider with a limbless insect larva on its thorax, and I figured maybe it's some kind of wasp ectoparasite. No ID for the larva though; to be fair it looks so generic it could be anything.
Araniella opisthographa with a maggot on its thorax https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/95394495
#arachtober #iNaturalist #Aranea #spides #Hymenoptera #parasitoids #wasps #wasplove #entomology #insects
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Paraleptomenes miniatus miniatus.
A smol potter #wasp which constructs tiny, tubular nests in, and around our cement and concrete domiciles.
Move over #Arachtober.
#Wasptober is where it's at!
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#wasplove clearly!
“Decoding the genetic and chemical basis of sexual attractiveness in parasitic wasps” by Sun et al. 2023 https://elifesciences.org/articles/86182
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If I was to nominate an insect in a vampire lookalike contest, this would be one of my top entries:
Stilbula sp., a wasp that, by the looks of it, is a parasitoid http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178149023
(The Ant Wiki says Stilbula wasps are parasitoids of ants: https://antwiki.org/wiki/Stilbula )
#iNaturalist #Hymenoptera #wasplove #wasps #entomology #insects #parasitoids #ants
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And of course lifestyle, or rather, ecological niche specialisation, tilts the vision-olfaction trade off, here in wasps:
“Differential investment in visual and olfactory brain regions is linked to the sensory needs of a wasp social parasite and its host”, by Rozanski et al. 2021 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cne.25242
This work compared the eusocial wasp Polistes dominula with its obligate social parasite Polistes sulcifer.
#NeuroEvo #neuroscience #entomology #Hymenoptera #wasplove #wasps #Polistes
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Earlier today at one of the bee hotels, #ESRF:
Sapiga sp. wasps (tentative ID) http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/153981981
Osmia cornuta, European orchard bee diligently sealing a chamber http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/153982124
Dermestes laniarius, a carrion-eating bettle http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/153982305
#iNaturalist #Hymenoptera #Coleoptera #insects #nativebees #wasplove #entomology
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On our window, this afternoon. Possibly an early hatching wasp, emerging from either our potted Christmas tree, or from outside—temperatures have been rather high, as in early Spring. Alas its fate is likely sealed by the absence of flowering plants.
Ichneumonidae http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/145046499
#InverteFest #iNaturalist #wasplove #Hymenoptera #entomology #parasitoid