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Project Noah Nature School
Hyposoter sp.
Looking like a 5 mm piece of bird-dropping, this little black and white capsule is a cocoon of an ichneumon wasp. It was attached to the leaves on this young tree and wrapped around it was the skin of its larval host - a lepidopteran.
Spotted on a young black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) in a nature reserve.
Occurrence record:
http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:b...
In a publication by The American Entomological Institute, it is stated that ichneumonid wasps go to great lengths to conceal their pupae from hyperparasitoids. Looking like a bird-dropping and remaining concealed under the skin of the host is one such strategy. There are others . Here is some very interesting reading about this family of wasps which is the largest of all hymenopteran families.
http://www.amentinst.org/GIN/
My thanks to Ken Walker( Museum Victoria) for the ID.
This is an exciting find for me and has led to some interesting information..would love to know the host species.
http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:b...
An aussie connection here
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zosterops/...
Spotted on Mar 28, 2015
Submitted on Mar 29, 2015
2 Comments
Ha ! I can see the "gecko face" now. Thank you for your kind comments James. I've learnt that it's worth looking at and photographing every little odd thing you come across - it has a place somewhere in this big wide web of life.
I came upon the photo in my ref link by accident while looking for something else; you can imagine how excited I was that it was exactly like my spotting from a few days ago. I would not have known what it was, otherwise.
That looks like a gecko face staring from over the top in image #1. Great shots and information Leuba