#perilampid

[usgsbiml]

Perilampustecture.  Check out the thoracic architecture.  Download it from our sister Flickr site (https://www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/?) so you can see it in vast detail...go ahead and blow up that central section and witness the balance of forms, logrhythmical changes in dished cavities, lovely layout of lines of sight, delicate deposits of texture, with scancing ridge counterprojections across the thoracic field, oiled in a brass-over-toned metallica finish.  Superb job there little 2mm hyperparasite Perilampus, raised out of a torticid caterpillar (and the likely braconid/ichneumonid inside) that was eating a sweetgum at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center by entoprotean Kristin Jayd.  

[usgsbiml]

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death   Rode the six hundred.

For some reason I think that Tennyson was imagining that the six hundred were riding Perilampids, I mean, wouldn't you?  This stead is Euperilampus triangularis from western Maryland. #perilampid #wasps #wasp #metallica #tennyson

[usgsbiml]

A perilampid (Euperilampus triangularis).  Tiny little metallic armored knights.  Really tiny, only a couple of millimetres.  You can find them in the wilds of vegetation if you hunker down and look inside the grass and forb canopy of fields, where they sit upon leaves like little blue teardrops.  Hyperparasite of other parasitic larvae living inside a host like a caterpillar.  After hatching on the vegetation their little vaguely silverfish like larvae find a host that has been attacked by another bigger parasite burrows in and finds the other parasitic larvae and parasitises the primary parasite of the host not the host itself.  Nature can be tricky. ... and beautiful.   

[usgsbiml]

Wasp Bling.

Here is a hyperparasite.  That is, a parasite of a parasite.  They are around, findable for those who squat down and look inside the grass and plant jungles in fields.  Just a field? You are so wrong,,, it is alive with things like this tiny Perilampid and so very very many others.  

The invitation is there....

“Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?” - Rumi

All original pictures completely public domain and available at our Flickr site:https://www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/

Photography Information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY

Follow us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/usgsbiml/

sam droege, public bee servant

[usgsbiml]

More Wasp Bling

Or, more precisely, more Perilampid Bling.  

This time there is a name:  Euperilampus triangularis

Collected in the mountains of Maryland (yes, Maryland has mountains...)

All original pictures completely public domain and available at our Flickr site:https://www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/

Photography Information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY

Follow us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/usgsbiml/

sam droege, public bee servant

[usgsbiml]

The Last of the Perilampids

These are such fun to look at hyperparasites.   This wee one is only 2mm long....compare it to the pin it is glued to.

Collected by Gene Scarpulla on Hart-Miller Island Dredge Spoil site at the mouth of Baltimore Harbor.

All original pictures completely public domain and available at our Flickr site:https://www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/

Photography Information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY

Follow us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/usgsbiml/

sam droege, public bee servant