pointblock
Cuckoo Wasp ( Rubytail Wasp)
I was very lucky yesterday to spot this in the bushes in my garden... I think these are quite rare (?) and only about 10mm long!
This spectacularly coloured little guy is a 'Cuckoo wasp' (aka Rubytail wasp) [possibly Chrysis ignita or Chrysura radians]. For all it's beauty it has something of a monstrous life-cycle. It is a 'parasitoid' species - it's larvae are endoparasitoid to the larvae of bees (such as the Masonry bees which I have on my garage). Parasitoid - means like a parasite, but with a more fatal outcome for the host. Endo - means inside of... so these guys lay their eggs inside the larvae of another species, which is then eaten alive from the inside out! Nice!
So pretty much like the Xenomorph species in the "Alien" films then. There's nothing stranger in Science Fiction than already exists in nature! Although there are species called "hyperparasitoids" which do the same to parasitoid animals - a hyperparasitoid within a parasitoid within a host (think Russian dolls)!
I hope you like the picture, and that my information proves to be accurate (do let me know if not, it's been a long time since my entomology days!)
Cuckoo Wasp ( Rubytail Wasp)
I was very lucky yesterday to spot this in the bushes in my garden... I think these are quite rare (?) and only about 10mm long!
This spectacularly coloured little guy is a 'Cuckoo wasp' (aka Rubytail wasp) [possibly Chrysis ignita or Chrysura radians]. For all it's beauty it has something of a monstrous life-cycle. It is a 'parasitoid' species - it's larvae are endoparasitoid to the larvae of bees (such as the Masonry bees which I have on my garage). Parasitoid - means like a parasite, but with a more fatal outcome for the host. Endo - means inside of... so these guys lay their eggs inside the larvae of another species, which is then eaten alive from the inside out! Nice!
So pretty much like the Xenomorph species in the "Alien" films then. There's nothing stranger in Science Fiction than already exists in nature! Although there are species called "hyperparasitoids" which do the same to parasitoid animals - a hyperparasitoid within a parasitoid within a host (think Russian dolls)!
I hope you like the picture, and that my information proves to be accurate (do let me know if not, it's been a long time since my entomology days!)