Recent studies suggest that while these brilliantly colored wasps are easily seen and recognized outside the burrow, they are “invisible” in the darkness of the burrow because they camouflage themselves by simulating the smell of their hosts. The first option requires the cuckoo wasp to eat several different kinds of food before it can pupate, while the second strategy lets the host larva do all the work, converting food stores into one juicy meal. Some larvae eat both the host’s larvae and its food items right away others wait until the host larva eats its food supply and reaches full size, and then they eat the host larva. Once the female cuckoo wasp succeeds in leaving its eggs in a burrow, the larvae have two survival strategies. Female cuckoo wasps then hide nearby to watch the burrow and either try to hitch a ride on the paralyzed prey as it’s being dragged into the burrow or else wait until the host flies off and then slip inside. They first find bees and wasps that are in the process of digging burrows and dragging paralyzed prey into their nests as food for their own young. Cuckoo wasps that parasitize ground-nesting bees and wasps must somehow slip their eggs into an underground burrow without being detected. Fortunately for the cuckoo wasps, their larvae’s hatching was well-timed to the sailing ships’ slow progress, and these insects are now established around the Bay Area and port cities in the northeastern United States.Ĭuckoo wasps might duck their parental responsibilities, but it’s not exactly an easy living. One such species, Chrysis angolensis, initially traveled to the New World from Africa by parasitizing mud dauber wasps that nested on the wooden beams of sailing ships. Many species target the nests of mud dauber wasps. They are most active in dry, open areas between May and August, with adults foraging on flower nectar as they follow favored routes multiple times a day searching for solitary wasps and bees to parasitize.Įach of the 166 cuckoo wasp species in California targets either a specific host or a specific nest structure. Scientists have not figured out whether the bright colors serve any function, and it wasn’t known until 2009 that the color is actually produced by light refracting through open spaces between six layers of cuticle in the wasps’ exoskeletons.Ĭuckoo wasps favor warm Mediterranean climates, and California is a center of cuckoo wasp biodiversity in North America. Since the cuckoo wasps depend on trickery and camouflage to fool their hosts, you might expect them to be drab. These wasps are parasites, and like their namesake cuckoo birds, they lay their eggs in the nests of other species (wasps or bees in this case). Fast-moving and no larger than a skinny housefly, these wasps stand out nonetheless: They glow an outrageous iridescent blue-green, as if illuminated from within.Ĭuckoo wasps pack a lot of drama into their tiny bodies. A cuckoo wasp is one of those remarkable animals that appears for just a few seconds and makes you wonder what the heck you just saw.
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