100 More Species #29 Gorytina wasp

[urbpan]

Gorytina wasp, Family Crabronidae, Subtribe Gorytina

Gory Tina? Surely someone has a friend named Tina who will be utterly thrilled to learn of this obscure taxon of wasp! Frankly, I don't even know if it's pronounced that way, but I can't say it any other way. Wouldn't it be great if the Gory Tina wasp had some awful life cycle that involved some helpless creature being consumed from the inside out?

Well of course it does, it's a wasp! Many if not most wasp species feed their young living and paralyzed prey. Each group of wasps specializes on a different group of prey animals--remember the great golden digger wasp uses only katydids, for example. The gorytina wasp is a much smaller insect, so it requires smaller provisions for its larva: treehoppers.

Thanks to Jenn Forman Orth for introducing me to a new virtual community of bug-identifiers, and to Doug Yanega, whose elegant ID read thus: "this is a Gorytine Crabronid. They eat treehoppers."

Comments

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Oh god, Doug! I used to go to lunch with him all the time when I was at UCR.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I love it!