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Braconidae
Braconid parasitoid wasp eggs & Lime Butterfly 'Papilio demoleus caterpillar . The wasp in the picture( family Eurytomidae ) is a hyperparasitoid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperparasi...
5 Comments
Great spotting
Amazing! Wonderful pictures.
I've gone through and made a couple of comments.
sometimes pretty difficult to tell with these really small things.
Thanks @John La Salle for explanation .
Here are few more photographs of parasitic wasps
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/122...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/130...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/124...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/118...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/404...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/124...
Nice spotting and photo.
This really shows the complexity of nature.
The wasp in the picture walking on the cocoons looks to be in the family Eurytomidae (I would guess Eurytoma sp.). Eurytoma is an amazingly large and diverse genus, with a remarkable range of host associations which can include phytophagy as well as acting as a parasitoid or hyperparasitoid. They are extremely difficult to identify to species - even with properly mounted specimens.
In this case this species is a hyperparasitoid (a parasitoid of a parasitoid), which seems to be checking out the pupae in the cocoons. Not an unusual thing at all for parasitoids to have other wasps which attack them.
So, you have three species in the picture:
the caterpillar, the wasp which formed the cocoons, and the wasp walking on the cocoons.