here's your creepy nature fact of the day

[queenlua]

a few weeks ago i was birding with a friend, and while we didn't see many birds—bad weather, bad time of year—we did see one bizarre/cool bit of insect interaction.

we were watching a spider making its web, when a big black flying arthropod slammed into it—full-body, full-force, knocking the spider clean out of the web, right?

we then found the spider on the ground, looking like it was spasming/flailing a bit, then saw the arthropod slam into it again—and this time, the arthropod stayed on top of the spider until the spider stopped moving.

"that's some fucked up red-in-tooth-and-claw shit," we said to ourselves, and moved on, but—

some later research indicates what we probably saw was a parasitic wasp? which is the most messed-up sci-fi spooky thing i've learned about in a while—basically, there's so much goddamn biomass in the form of arthropods roaming around, that it makes sense for species to evolve to exploit that biomass, and thus, you'll get a species of parasitic wasp that specifically lays its eggs in a specific species of spider (eventually killing the spider), and a different species of parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in some other species of spider...

freaky designer-drug hyper-targeted-bio-killer shit! but also, what an incredibly fascinating find? nature is so weird. i love birding because even if i dip on an owl i can learn new fucked-up things about insects and that's almost as cool lol

Comments

[wolffyluna]

That sounds /so cool./ Parasitic wasps are awesome, but also terrifying.

(Unfortunately my only wasp facts aren't about parasitoid ones, but are instead about how fig wasp reproduction is Fucked Up.)

[queenlua]

wait i definitely want to hear about how fig wasp reproduction is Fucked Up tho. if you care to share lol

[wolffyluna]

So, fig wasps hatch from inside figs. The males hatch first, and go to find a female to mate with. Except they don't really have a wings, or any way to get of the fig, so they find unhatched female larva (who are usually from the same brood.) They mate with them, and then, as the gentlemen they are, help her chew through the gall she is inside of, and then chew and escape route out of the fig.

The female then flies off, and finds a new, unpollinated fig. She crawls through the opening of the fig flower, pollinating it and... ripping her wings and antennae off in the process. But that's fine. :) She doesn't need to leave the fig after she's laid her eggs :)

The plant detects the egg laying, and very helpfully produces galls for the eggs. But also, you may have heard that every time you eat a fig, you eat a wasp. This isn't true, for two reasons. One, most commercial figs aren't pollinated by wasps. Two... the fig digests the dead wasps as it ripens.

[helicoprion]

This is the best creepy wasp fact AND the best creepy plant fact, omg.

[queenlua]

+1, omg, this is HORRIFYING and AWESOME, i'm never gonna look at a fig the same way lol