Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Certain caterpillars eat plants that are toxic to both themselves and the parasite to cure themselves. [24] Drosophila melanogaster larvae also self-medicate with ethanol to treat parasitism. [25] D. melanogaster females lay their eggs in food containing toxic amounts of alcohol if they detect parasitoid wasps nearby. The alcohol protects them ...
Parasitoid wasps face a range of obstacles to oviposition, [6] including behavioural, morphological, physiological and immunological defences of their hosts. [ 29 ] [ 34 ] To thwart this, some wasps inundate their host with their eggs so as to overload its immune system's ability to encapsulate foreign bodies; [ 35 ] others introduce a virus ...
Another family, the Pompilidae, is a specialist parasitoid of spiders. [10] Some wasps are even parasitoids of parasitoids; the eggs of Euceros are laid beside lepidopteran larvae and the wasp larvae feed temporarily on their haemolymph, but if a parasitoid emerges from the host, the hyperparasites continue their life cycle inside the ...
Most parasitoid wasps dispatch prey in some such hideous manner, including entombing their paralyzed bodies. This tiny ichneumon wasp (Enicospilus purgatus) is nocturnal, as are most of its quarry ...
Parasitoids are insects which sooner or later kill their hosts, placing their relationship close to predation. [32] Most parasitoids are parasitoid wasps or other hymenopterans; others include dipterans such as phorid flies. They can be divided into two groups, idiobionts and koinobionts, differing in their treatment of their hosts. [33]
The life strategies of the species in this family vary greatly. There are both solitary and gregarious species, living outside (ectoparasitoid) or inside their prey (endoparasitoid), koinobionts and idiobionts, primary parasitoids and hyperparasitoids and even predators that kill and consume the prey immediately; [3] they also include fig wasp genera.
Natural enemies of insects play an important part in limiting the densities of potential pests. Biological control agents such as these include predators, parasitoids, pathogens, and competitors. Biological control agents of plant diseases are most often referred to as antagonists.
They stand erect on the plant on which they hatched, and without any distinguishable preparation, jump about 10 mm from the leaf onto a foraging ant. [8] The larvae are external parasitoids of their hosts, [4] and are not noticed due to their acquisition of the host’s odor. [13] After the wasps are fully developed, they emerge in large numbers.