Back زنبار طفيلي Arabic زنبور انگل‌واره Persian Guêpe parasitoïde French Avespa parasitoide Galician Tawon parasitoid ID 寄生バチ Japanese 기생벌 Korean Parasittvepser NB Vespa parasitoide Portuguese Parasitoid wasp SIMPLE

Parasitoid wasp

Megarhyssa macrurus (Ichneumonidae), a parasitoid, ovipositing into its host through the wood of a tree. The body of a female is c. 2 inches (50 mm) long, with an ovipositor c. 4 inches (100 mm) long.
Females of the parasitoid wasp Neoneurus vesculus (Braconidae) ovipositing in workers of the ant Formica cunicularia.
Parasitized white cabbage larvae showing wasp larvae exiting its body, spinning cocoons. Playback at double speed. Adult wasps at normal speed.

Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causing the death of these hosts. Different species specialise in hosts from different insect orders, most often Lepidoptera, though some select beetles, flies, or bugs; the spider wasps (Pompilidae) exclusively attack spiders.

Parasitoid wasp species differ in which host life-stage they attack: eggs, larvae, pupae, or adults. They mainly follow one of two major strategies within parasitism: either they are endoparasitic, developing inside the host, and koinobiont, allowing the host to continue to feed, develop, and moult; or they are ectoparasitic, developing outside the host, and idiobiont, paralysing the host immediately. Some endoparasitic wasps of the superfamily Ichneumonoidea have a mutualistic relationship with polydnaviruses, the viruses suppressing the host's immune defenses.[1]

Parasitoidism evolved only once in the Hymenoptera, during the Permian, leading to a single clade called Euhymenoptera,[2] but the parasitic lifestyle has secondarily been lost several times including among the ants, bees, and vespid wasps. As a result, the order Hymenoptera contains many families of parasitoids, intermixed with non-parasitoid groups. The parasitoid wasps include some very large groups, some estimates giving the Chalcidoidea as many as 500,000 species, the Ichneumonidae 100,000 species, and the Braconidae up to 50,000 species. Host insects have evolved a range of defences against parasitoid wasps, including hiding, wriggling, and camouflage markings.

Many parasitoid wasps are considered beneficial to humans because they naturally control agricultural pests. Some are applied commercially in biological pest control, starting in the 1920s with Encarsia formosa to control whitefly in greenhouses. Historically, parasitoidism in wasps influenced the thinking of Charles Darwin.[3]

  1. ^ Herniou, Elisabeth A.; Huguet, Elisabeth; Thézé, Julien; Bézier, Annie; Periquet, Georges; Drezen, Jean-Michel (2013-09-19). "When parasitic wasps hijacked viruses: genomic and functional evolution of polydnaviruses". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 368 (1626): 20130051. doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0051. PMC 3758193. PMID 23938758.
  2. ^ Zhang, Qi; Kopylov, Dmitry S.; Rasnitsyn, Alexandr P.; Zheng, Yan; Zhang, Haichun (November 2020). Smith, Andrew (ed.). "Burmorussidae, a new family of parasitic wasps (Insecta, Hymenoptera) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber". Papers in Palaeontology. 6 (4): 593–603. doi:10.1002/spp2.1312. ISSN 2056-2802. S2CID 219039881.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Darwin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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