Ancient WASP preserved in Amber may have used the rear end to trap flies

An extraordinarily turned off WASP found to be magnificent in Amber may have used his stomach to understand other insects like a Venus aircraft trap before laying his eggs on them.

“It is in contrast to something I have completed before. It is unlike any WASP or other insect that is on today,” says Lars Vilhelmsen at the Danish Natural History Museum.

Vilhelmsen and his colleagues have named WASP Sirenobethylus Camybdis After Charybdis, a sea monster in Homer’s epic poem Odyssey. The insect lived almost 99 million years ago during the chalk period.

The researchers used micro-CT scan, an X-ray technique, to examine 16 female wasps, which were jacket in Amber, found in the Kachin region of Myanmar.

All the wasps had three flaps in their abdumens, which constituted a jammed structure. It was preserved in different positions, sometimes open and sometimes partially closed, which suggested it was a moving, grabbing unit when the insects were alive.

“It was very exciting, but it was also a challenge because how can you explain how this animal worked when you have ours today?” Says Vilhelmsen.

So he and his colleagues took an example of living and extinct wasps and analysis of their characteristics. This revealed that the closest analogs of the wasps in amber were modern parasitoid species of the Chrysidoida superfamily. These include Cuckoo WASPS whose larvae live on hosts like parasites and eventually kill them while eating them.

The key to behavior of S. Charybdis Can be the lower flap of the trapping stomach that may have ACTD like Venus Air Trap system, says Vilhelmsen. “There are these faucet -like elongated trigger hair, probably sensory hair expanded from this lower flap. If this had rested on the surface and the host worked by, it touched these hairs and maybe launched the WASP WASP quickly backwards, because potential host within reach.”

He suggests it S. Charybdis Would have waited in bakhold on potential victim like flying insects or jumping nymphs with his trap open and then snap it closed to limit the host and lay his eggs.

“This is a really unique discovery,” says Manuel Brazidec at the University of Rennes in France. “What I find extraordinary is that the stomach of Sirenobethylus Camybdis Is a whole new solution to a problem that all parasitoid insects have: How do you get your host to stop moving while putting your eggs on or in it? “