Friday, July 3, 2009

An Unlikely Wasp

A few days ago I was just sitting here at the computer and noticed a tiny (no more than 4 mm) ant crawling on my hand. I have a good variety of ants in my Tucson yard, and even if I don't know their names, I at least recognize them as familiar. This one was different, with the gigantic eyes taking up most of the head giving it a alien look.

So I posted it to Bugguide.net, where Gordon Snelling was very quick to point me away from ants and towards a small family of parasitic wasps called Dryinidae.










It turns out that Dryinids are parasites on leafhoppers, and the females are wingless ant mimics.

No comments:

Post a Comment