Of Star Trek, Mark Twain and helmets: 15 new species of wasps with curious names

Date: March 27, 2017

Source: Pensoft Publishers

A total of fifteen new species of parasitic wasps have been described from across the Neotropical region. Apart from belonging to a peculiar group of wasps distinct with large and elongated bodies, the new insects also draw attention with the curious names they have been formally assigned with.

Among them, there are species named after characters from the television series Star Trek and Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, and five wasps bearing species names all translating to 'helmet'. The study, conducted by graduate student Katherine C. Nesheim and Dr. Norman F. Johnson, both affiliated with the Ohio State University, USA, and Dr. Lubomír Masner, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The larvae of the studied wasps parasitise the eggs of lanternflies and planthoppers. These species inhabit exclusively the Neotropical region, with their range stretching from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the north to Misiones in southern Paraguay. Despite being quite abundant in the region, these insects have remained under-researched until recently.

One of the newly discovered wasp is named Phanuromyia odo, where the species name odo refers to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fictional character of the same name. In the popular sci-fi television series, Odo belongs to a species of shapeshifters called Changelings. The reason for the scientists to associate the parasitoid with the character is the spectacular variability observed within the insect species. In fact, it was this peculiarity that, at some point, led the entomologists believe they were dealing with two separate species.

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Scientists need your help to spot ladybirds

June 2, 2016

Scientists are calling on people who are out in their garden this summer to take part in The Ladybird Challenge and help discover how far an alien ladybird species in the UK is affecting other insects, including a wasp parasite.

Researchers from the University of Stirling are working in partnership with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the UK Ladybird Survey to find out whether the natural balance between the seven-spot ladybird and the parasitic wasp has been disrupted by the arrival of another ladybird species in the UK - the harlequin ladybird.

PhD researcher Katie Murray from the University's Faculty of Natural Sciences, said: "Harlequin ladybirds continue to cause large population declines for lots of native ladybirds, but we believe the impact is even more widespread. We need the public to help us find out whether the parasitic wasp has also been affected.

"We're asking volunteers to help find seven-spot ladybirds in their gardens and parks and check if they have a wasp cocoon. Cocoons are easy to spot - they are nearly the same size as the ladybird and are found between its legs."

Intrepid ladybird spotters are encouraged to count how many ladybirds they find and how many have cocoons. Records from these everyday eco-warriors will allow researchers to look at the occurrence of the wasp in the UK and whether it is less common in areas where harlequin ladybirds dominate.

Dr Matt Tinsley, senior lecturer at the University, added: "The wasp has an amazing lifecycle: it lays an egg in an adult ladybird, which hatches into a grub that eats the ladybird from the inside. The grub eventually squeezes out of the still-living ladybird and spins a cocoon between its legs. The ladybird is turned into a 'zombie bodyguard' protecting the cocoon from predators until the wasp emerges. Without the ladybird, the wasp would not be able to complete its lifecycle."

Helen Roy, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and coordinator of the UK Ladybird Survey, said: "People across the UK have been instrumental in tracking the spread of the harlequin ladybird and providing records of native ladybirds too.

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Use of parasitic wasps to fight ash borer grows to 24 states

May 25, 2016 by David Pitt

Millions of tiny wasps that are natural parasites for the emerald ash borer have been released into wooded areas in 24 states as the battle against the tree-killing borer is now biological.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has researched and approved for release four species of parasitic wasps that naturally target the larval and egg stages of the ash borer, which has killed an estimated 38 million ash trees in urban and residential areas. The estimated cost of treating, removing, and replacing the lost trees is $25 billion, according to a report written by USDA and U.S. Forest Service entomologists earlier this month.

On average, federal and state resource managers spend more than $29 million per year to manage ash borer populations.

The tiniest of the wasps looks like a pepper flake on a white surface. It lays eggs inside ash borer eggs, preventing them from hatching. Three other wasps, one the size of a gnat, lays eggs inside ash borer larvae halting development into adult beetles.

They were identified in China in 2002 and studied for several years before scientists concluded they could be safety released in the United States to fight the ash borer.

The wasp release program is in 24 of the 26 states where the ash borer has been found, said entomologist Ben Slager, the manager of the laboratory in Brighton, Michigan, producing the wasps run by the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a USDA agency. Plans are to also distribute wasps to Texas and Georgia, the final two states not yet in the program.

"This isn't going to save anybody's tree in their yard or in the city. What we're working to do is to protect the next generation coming up," Slager said Tuesday. "It's really a long-term management strategy."

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Fruit Flies Medicate Offspring with Alcohol

Joseph Castro, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 21 February 2013 Time: 02:00 PM ET

It's not likely anyone would nominate a fruit fly for a "Best Mother of the Year" award — after laying her eggs, the insect hits the road, never to be heard from again. But it now turns out that fruit fly mothers aren't completely uncaring and actually try to give their offspring a fighting chance at life.

If she spots a deadly parasitic wasp around, the female fruit fly will "medicate" her offspring by laying her eggs in an environment with high levels of alcohol, which is very toxic to the wasps but not to the flies, new research shows.

Throughout the world, parasitic wasps are a bane to fruit flies. Female wasps lay their eggs inside  fly larvae, which then hatch and eat the maggots from the inside out. Fly larvae have a natural immune response to try to kill the wasp, but the venom the wasp injects along with her egg sometimes counters this defense. 

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/27316-flies-medicate-offspring-with-alcohol.html

Baby Wasps Disinfect Cockroaches Before Eating Them

If cockroaches had nightmares, the emerald cockroach wasp surely would deserve a prominent place therein.

These colorful, tiny parasitic wasps sting American cockroaches twice, once in the midsection to prevent them from running away, and a second time directly in the brain, to make the insects sluggish and zombielike. The wasps then drag the roaches by their antenna, akin to a human pulling a dog on a leash, into a protected nook and lay an egg on the roach. The egg ultimately hatches into larvae that devour the roach from the inside out.

About six weeks later, a young adult wasp emerges after spinning a cocoon inside the shell of the roach. But there's a catch: What's to prevent the cockroach "meat" from spoiling? Cockroaches are notoriously dirty animals, covered in bacteria that begin to spoil their flesh — and threaten to harm larval wasps — during this long incubation period.

Continued: http://www.livescience.com/26035-wasps-disinfect-cockroaches.html

Parasitic Wasps Remember Better If Reward Is Greater

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2012) — Two parasitic wasp species show similar memory consolidation patterns in response to rewards of different quality, providing evidence that the reward value affects the type of memory that is consolidated. The full results are reported Aug. 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

The researchers, led by Marjolein Kruidhof of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, tested how wasps store scents associated with situations of low reward (egg-laying into a inferior-quality host species that lays single eggs) versus high reward (egg-laying into a superior-quality host species that lays egg clusters) in their brain.

They found that both wasp species behaved similarly, retaining memory for the scent associated with the high reward scenario to a greater extent compared to the low reward scenario.

They write that this behavior makes sense given the energetic cost of consolidating shorter-lasting memory forms into long-term, consolidated memories, which may only be advantageous if the benefit is sufficiently high.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822181358.htm