After last week’s posts, I went back to the same display area on another sunny day and found a couple of more colorful micro-insects. This Torymus genus wasp flashes a brilliant green, and upon closer inspection, its wings shine purple and its eyes are red. These wasps usually parasitize wasps that form galls on trees. That is, their larvae grow by eating the larvae of another wasp. Judging by the lack of an ovipositor, this wasp is male.
This miniature wonder is at most three millimeters long. I took a decent video of it, but this is the best image I can muster. It’s in the Encyrtidae family of parasitic wasps, which has some oddball traits. The eggs of some of the species multiply, like identical twins split an egg, only they do it many more times over. Making things weirder, the resulting clone-like group of larvae differ in size, and researchers think the larger ones act as guards to protect the others, sacrificing their lives along the way.
As you can see, though, “larger” is all relative. The rounded object on the left is my index finger. This wasp used its black and white antennae like little probes, testing the ground in front of it as it walked.
Cheers!
Ticklehead 