(Image: Yuan Tung Shih/NHM)
Why make your own way when you can score a free ride? A newly discovered species of parasitoid wasp is the first of its kind seen catching a lift on much larger damselflies.
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Andrew Polaszek at London’s Natural History Museum and colleagues captured this photo of three of the cheeky wasps in action. The female wasps are clustered around the base of a damselfly’s abdomen, waiting for her to descend on water to lay eggs (also shown in the video, top).
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Video: Parasitoid wasp hitches a ride on damselfly
The wasps then spring into action: laying their own eggs inside the damselfly’s eggs. The wasp larvae later eat the damselfly’s unhatched offspring for breakfast. Not the most gracious of thank yous for a free flight.
The species has been appropriately named Hydrophylita emporos – emporos is Latin for “passenger”. It is the fifth member of the genus to be identified, and the first in its genus to be found in the Old World, having been identified in northern Taiwan.
Inevitably, other parasitoid wasps also display anti-social behaviour: one species is known to create zombified insects, for example. However, another variety is useful, to us at least, as it . In 2011, a housefly infestation at Edinburgh Zoo was cleared by introducing a parasitoid wasp species native to the UK.
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