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A bright metallic green wasp with an ovipositor one and half times longer than her body. The texture of the head and thorax is rugosa which makes it look like it sparkles. The legs are orange and she has red eyes. This wasp is only 4 mm in body length, so you can't really see how gorgeous she is until she is magnified. Watching her move around, it is amazing how agile she can be even with such a long ovipositor. Family Torymidae. For all her beauty, she hides dark parasitic secrets, see notes.
Garden lights, semi-rural residential area, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, 2,200 meters.
The wasps of this family are mostly ectoparasitoids of phytophagous inquilines of gall-forming insects usually Cynipidae and Cecidomyiidae (gall flies). A few species are primary parasitoids or hyperparasitoids of various Holometabola or Coccoidea (scale). That definitely explains the long ovipositor, so it can parasitize the larvae inside galls. There is another wasp in this Family, which looks very much like this one, except that it has thick toothed hind femora which it uses to grasp onto a female Mantis. It stays on the Mantis until she begins to make her Ootheca and then the wasp inserts her eggs into the still soft frothy substance of the egg case. Her hatching larvae will then feed on the mantis nymphs inside the Ootheca. (See http://www.ozanimals.com/Insect/Mantis-P...). https://bugguide.net/node/view/901895 https://www.opsu.edu/Academics/SciMathNu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torymidae
Spotted on Aug 14, 2018
Submitted on Aug 20, 2018
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