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Project Noah Nature School
Field Notes: Medium sized, solitary, parasitic. Black body with orange and white markings. White spots on thorax, bands on abdomen. The legs are orange and the antenna are black with a broad white band. Females have a long ovipositor longer than the body. The male does not have an ovipositor. Host pupae helicoverpa and some armyworms. Size - 15 mm body length. Female has white band in antennae. Male has orange and black antennae Female searches over surface of soil until she finds a pupal chamber. She digs through, enters the chamber and lays an egg in the pupa. She then feeds of the pupal fluids until the pupa stiffen. The wasp larvae then eat the tissues and emerge as adults by making a tunnel. The tunnel is made by chewing off the top of the pupal chamber.
On a porch step.
Female, based on white tipped antennae.
Spotted on Nov 15, 2013
Submitted on Nov 17, 2013
5 Comments
I did have a go, but the problem is that there are several different ichneumonids with the same colour pattern , and I can't find an exact match on BugGuide for your one, though this is close: http://bugguide.net/node/view/339806 , only the hind leg colour pattern doesn't match.
Ichneumon promissorius is entirely different, however, and I suspect your ID was based on this misidentified (in the file title, but not in the file description which probably correctly calls it Xanthocryptus sp.) image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:...
Would you be ever so kind & help me ID this, stho002?
No way is it Ichneumon promissorius!
Thanks, John!!
parasitic wasp in the family Ichneumonidae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonid...