Wasp redesigns web of doomed spider
By Susan Milius
A wasp larva injects a spider with a web-altering drug, driving the spider to spin a shelter just right for a wasp cocoon.
It’s “probably the most finely directed alteration of behavior ever attributed to an insect parasitoid,” notes William G. Eberhard of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and University of Costa Rica in San Jose. In the July 20 Nature, he describes the wasps’ elaborate attacks.
A female of one species of Hymenoepimecis strikes a Plesiometa argyra spider hanging in its web. She temporarily paralyzes the spider with her sting and lays an egg on its abdomen.