#which is based on parasitic wasps bc… cool… | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

parasitoidism · 4 years

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top 5 insects ? 🎷🐛

im gonna do top 5 minus wasps because i have already gone on at length

1. phorid fliess theres a bunch of species that are specialist parasitoids of ants (and some bees) but basically they lay their eggs in the ant the larva grows eventually moves to the ants head eats its brain makes it wander off somewhere releases an enzyme that dissolves the muscles connecting the ants head to its body the head falls off and they pupate inside the head! they contain the worlds smallest fly which does this

2. Twisted wing insects (Strepsiptera) these guys are so neat theyre their own order and they really arent closely related to any other orders besides coleoptera (distantly) but they exist as parasites on a pretty wide range of insects but they have this crazy interesting sexual dimorphism the males mature into winged insects but the females basically remain as a larva and never leave the host and the males mate with them right and then the eggs hatch inside her brood chamber and them erm eat her and emerge to find a new host etc etc very cool stuff

3. Rove beetles! they have a ton of documented relationships with ants (myrmecophily) and some of them live their entire lives inside the ant colony and can get the ants to feed and clean them (and sometimes raise their young) but some also just live sort of around the outskirts of the colony but most use some kind of chemical trickery to get stuff out of ants bc ants are stupid as shit and as long as you have the right chemicals theyre like oh cool another ant

4. scorpionflies are always a treat to see they just look so cool. did you know gaming the “scorpion tail” is actually their genitals they cant sting. also hangingflies are a family of scorpionfly and they have this cool mating thing where the female chooses a mate based on gifts the males bring her

5. Termites just bc i want to say that they are in the same order as cockroaches which is a fun little bit of taxonomic weirdness.. and they are in the superorder Dictyoptera with... you guessed it mantises obviously

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