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#hymenoptera
humblegrub · 7 months
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fuzzy puffs love artichoke fluffs pt 2
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futurebird · 3 months
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Wasps so tiny you will question everything.
Imagine being so teeny tiny that you are an endoparasite on *leafhoppers* Leafhoppers are already in the "so small they go unnoticed" category, and you're just a little pest on a minuscule thing.
Of course the group that's most likely to choose this life? The wasps Wasps are some of the smallest insects. There are "fairy flies" that are parasites of the eggs of certain insects.
They are so small that air is "thick" to them and their wings have feathered edges are are oar shaped.
Some fairly flies are so tiny that their neurons are cells without nuclei. They got rid of them to save space. They can still think though... presumably the tiniest little thoughts.
Photo by Alexey Polilov, 2012
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They lay their eggs inside of the eggs of 1-2mm long crop pests.
And... read the article to see what the males are like... they are even smaller somehow, but it's ... disturbing.
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morbidsmenagerie · 3 months
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Finally got the full color version of my wasp zine printed!
Here's the full docx file if you want to read it!
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woodlnds · 1 year
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Random bee behavior fact for those who wish to read, just because I feel like it and because it’s late and I’m stalling on sleeping:
Bumblebees may seem like passive, cuddly, and docile creatures, but they won’t hesitate to defend themselves if they feel as if their warnings aren’t being read or taken seriously.
I.e. the photo and diagram below, when a bee feels threatened they will raise one or more of their legs into the air, signaling to whatever or whomever may be bothering them as a message essentiality saying: “hey, back off, too close!”
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species pictured: bombus pascuorum, bombus impatiens
If their defensive posture goes unnoticed or ignored, they may be pushed into defending themselves by stinging (which is also a stressful experience for not only one such as yourself, but also for the bee.) If you ever find yourself getting close to a bumblebee while taking pictures, walking close to them, or just admiring them, remember this posture! If a bee does this, it is simply asking you to take a step back as it feels it is being threatened.
Now you can understand and use this knowledge to your advantage if you ever come across one in the future. (Of course, because it’s very hard not to anthropomorphize animals, I do have to admit that they do look pretty cute when doing it. Just remember to respect them though!)
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Okay, so this is really cool! You have this phenomenon where some plants grow edible appendages to their seeds to entice ants to carry them underground where they can safely sprout. And then you have wasps which lay their eggs on the leaves, stems, and other parts of plants and trigger the growth of galls (swellings) which both feed and protect the wasp larvae until they reach maturity.
The boy who was watching the ants noticed they were taking wasp galls underground, too. Further exploration found that the wasp larvae were unharmed inside the galls; the only thing the ants had eaten were edible appendages similar to those on the seeds they collected. The wasp larvae stayed safe inside the ant nest, feeding on their galls, until it was time to emerge and head back out to the surface.
So it turns out that the edible portions of the galls have the same sorts of fatty acids as the edible parts of the seeds. And those fatty acids are also found in dead insects. Scientists think that the wasps evolved a way to make the galls they created mimic the edible portions of the seeds to get the ants to collect the galls. This isn't the only example of wasps making use of ants as caretakers for their young, but it's a really fascinating example thereof--especially if you consider ants evolved from wasps at least 100 million years ago.
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platycryptus · 1 year
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this mud dauber wasp (Sceliphron caementarium) seemed distressed about something in her clay nest. Turns out it had been commandeered by a keyhole wasp (Pachodynerus nasidens), who was now aggressively asserting ownership
keyhole wasps, which hunt weevils and other small beetles, will opportunistically nest in any sort of small cavity (such as a keyhole). The existing literature on this species doesn’t say anything about taking over other wasp‘s nests, only that they sometimes refurbish abandoned nests, but I guess this one didn’t get the memo.
This isn't the worst of their mischief though- they also have a habit of building nests that clog up the airspeed measuring instruments in planes and have caused several fatal crashes.
(Florida, 10/6/21)
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ljsbugblog · 3 months
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my favourite visitor to the pond is this beautiful Australian Hornet (Abispa ephippium). she regularly comes to the pond to drink, and luckily isnt too camera-shy!
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despite being called a hornet, A. ephippium is actually a species of potter wasp. as such, she is a solitary creature who spends her time building mud-nests to house her larvae, and hunting caterpillars with which to feed them. as an adult, she is a pollinator who feeds on flower nectar.
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she is about 30mm (1.2in) in length, but deft enough to carefully land on top of the water without breaking the surface tension (so far she is the biggest insect I've seen thats able to do this). its an amazing behaviour from both an entomologic and photographic perspective, these photos are some of my favourites <3
Australian Hornet, female (Abispa ephippium).
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crevicedwelling · 7 months
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this little bee, like many solitary bees and wasps, sleeps with his mandibles holding onto a stem & legs tucked up. he’s Coelioxys coturnix, a nonnative cuckoo bee recently introduced to a few spots in the US
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Coelioxys are one of several groups known as cuckoo bees; females of this particular species lay eggs in the nests of their close relatives, Megachile leafcutters. Coelioxys larvae kill the host larva with sharp mandibles, then devour the pollen its unwitting benefactor worked to stockpile.
rotated him a bit to show off the pseudopupil effect
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jupiterswasphouse · 5 months
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Ohhhhh baybey IT'S-
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onenicebugperday · 4 months
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Green sawflies in the genus Rhogogaster, Tenthredinidae
Photo 1 by sylvain_naturaliste, 2-4 by jackapod, 5-6 by palamarchuk, and 7-9 (larva) by sskorpio
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addicted2wasps · 2 months
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Drawing of the day: Megarhyssa greenei. Bonus mini collage of my favourite non-cartoon wasp drawings. I plan on adding more as I go along. For now, this is only a sample. Drawing wasps is keeping me sane during these dark times. Which one is your favourite?
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humblegrub · 7 months
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leafcutter bee song (unintentional)
see the video on tiktok here
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creatureimages · 1 month
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anti-wasp sentiment is going to turn me into the joker. "oh i hate wasps >:(((((((( but i love bees!!!!!" L + ratio + bees are wasps + name more five species of bee + honeybees are an ecological nightmare even within their native range + the overwhelming majority of wasps are non-stinging parasitoids + the majority of insects might be non-stinging parasitoid wasps? any hymenopterologists/coleopterologists/biostatisticians know how realistic this paper is? (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12898-018-0176-x) + have you ever actually been stung by a wasp?
anyway heres a whimsical ichneumonid
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herpsandbirds · 5 months
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Neon Cuckoo Bee (Thyreus nitidulus), family Apidae, Australia
photograph by Vengolis
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woodlnds · 7 months
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Wasp-posting-wednesday!!
Ever heard a wasp tantrum before?
She (a great golden digger wasp, sphex ichneumoneus) was trying to dig a hole for her offspring, but the blades of dead grass were getting in her way. So while trying to grip and tear them out, she was buzzing and huffing which made it look as if she was having a tantrum. Pretty funny and cute. Turn up your volume to hear her squeak!
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nightjarring · 19 days
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Something people might be interested in since my friends didn't know: there's this little parasitoid wasp, Copidosoma (Encyrtidae) that has larvae with castes, like ants!
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.
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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..
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Update: this paper is about competition between braconids Cotesia glomerata and rubecola and is not the same thing as what's going on in Copidosoma, but does still involve baby on baby violence in the flesh of a living caterpillar.
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