#braconid wasps

[herpsandbirds]

Braconid wasps are so intertwined with the survival of a virus that they partly share a genome. And this extreme teamwork is all for the sake of being better parasites.

[quilbug-cam]

Dainty <3

🪲ID Guess: Braconid Wasps 🌿Date: September 2025

[stickbuggedonrepeat]

Guys I’m going crazy. This is insane. I’m the bug identifier of my friends so I get sent a lot of insect on the regular. Standard stuff for me. That is until I get sent these pictures

[rattyexplores]

Parasitic Wasp Pupae

When I first found this strange pupae, I was just left baffled. On second viewing however, I believe this may be the remains of a mummified caterpillar. You can still see the prolegs, and the swollen body is very akin to wasp mummification.

If you are unfamiliar with this process, it’s quite similar to other forms of wasp parasitism:

The female wasp lays her eggs inside the caterpillars body

The wasp larva eats the caterpillar from the inside

What’s left is the caterpillar’s skin, which hardens into a shell

The wasp larva pupates inside the caterpillar

Finally, the adult wasp hatches out of the caterpillar, leaving a distinct circular hole

(Another example of this)

Although this is a very morbid death, I must be clear that without wasps like these, caterpillars will quickly overrun every single plant. Natural pests like these are very much needed.

Parasite - Unidentified, Subfamily Rogadinae (?)

Parasite Host - Unidentified, Order Lepidoptera

01/06/22

[nanonaturalist]

I was finally able to ID some of my mystery observations on iNat! I always love finding “evidence” like this but having absolutely no idea what they are. I had guessed that the top one (bright lime green) was an insect cocoon, and the bottom one (white cottony fluffy mass attached to a stalk of grass) was a collection of eggs.

The top photo was taken at Southeast Metropolitan Park outside of Austin in late January. iNaturalist Observation [link] is here. Turns out all I had to do was google “texas lime green cocoon” and viola! These are spinybacked orbweaver eggs! Spinybacked orbweavers are one of my favorite Texas spiders--they are so much fun to watch and I find them everywhere. Below are just a few of the ones I have seen recently--each photo is a unique individual.

The bottom two photos were taken in my backyard, also in late January. iNaturalist observation [link] is here. This one really had me stumped. I have seen several of these but just couldn’t figure out what they were. Nobody on iNat offered suggestions. I noticed the first ones towards the end of summer/early fall, and I assumed that they were likely eggs or a cocoon from one of the common insects/spider I find in my yard. I looked up what the eggs/cocoons for various species looked like, but nothing was even close. I had pretty much given up. 

Then last night, I was at the bookstore trying to find some African bird books for my November trip to Malawi and had no luck, so I consoled myself by leafing through the Texas Nature books to see if any were worth buying. I found one that was about Texas Bugs, and was an interesting guide of the most common arthropods you find here. Lo and behold, in the braconid wasp section, there was a photo that looked EXACTLY like this. 

In case you are not familiar, braconid wasps are the parasitic wasps that grow on caterpillars. You may be familiar with the Microgastrinae that have individual pupas hanging off caterpillars (photo taken at a bioblitz in east Texas in May 2015, observation posted here [link]):

It seems that other species in this family make super fluffy pupae--so fluffy that you can’t see the poor caterpillar underneath them. I had considered dissecting one of these fluffy masses, but decided against it for some reason. Now I really wish I had! If I’d seen a caterpillar in there, I would have known it was braconid wasps!

[helluvatimes]

At A Crossroads In Life

A Braconid Wasp pausing and wondering which way to take in a local park. Photo credit: Eleanor Chua.

This was captured at the ISO of 5000 and the resultant noise level at 8 odd in this downsized image was rather unexpected out of a full-frame sensor.

[clairehoneybee]

Don't Kill That Tomato Hormworm!!

Don’t Kill That Tomato Hormworm!!

Working outside I encounter a lot of unusual pests and annoyances. One of my most despised pests is the Tomato Hornworm. Tomato Hornworms are really big green alien-like caterpillars that can munch through and devastate your vegetable  garden.

Hormworm munching a tomato leaf

Nondescript brown moths lay pearl-like eggs on your tomato, pepper, or eggplant,  from which the big green monsters will…

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[toddjdreyer]

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