Video: parasitoids & wasps

Scientists have captured a rare event on video: strepsipteran larvae emerging from a dead host [watch the video here].

Strepsiptera are parasitoids that spend most of their time living inside the bodies of other insects.

The video shows the body of a paper wasp (Polistes dominulus) that was parasitized by a female strepsipteran Xenos vesparum. The larvae emerging are the 1st instars of Xenos.

Normally the wasp only dies once after all the larvae have emerged but in this case they are seen still emerging from the body of a paper wasp that has been dead for more than six hours.

Oxford’s Jeya Kathirithamby, who led the team that made the observations with Laura Beani from the University of Florence, explains that the paper wasp and strepsipteran Xenos is one of the few host/parasitoid systems that can be studied in the lab. As such it can shed light on the behaviour and evolution of social insects such as paper wasps.

Reproductive females (gynes) that have been parasitized by Xenos do not build nests but do remain near newly-built nests in the Spring and Summer. This means that when the eggs of the paper wasp hatch the next year the free-living strepsipteran larvae from these gynes can parasitize the next generation of wasps.

The Oxford researchers are currently working with Amy Toth at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study gene expression in paper wasps with and without the Xenos parasitoid.

Dr Jeyaraney Kathirithamby is a Divisional Career Research Fellow at Oxford’s Department of Zoology and a Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh's College.

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