Ancient wasp preserved in amber may have used its rear end to trap flies

An extraordinary extinct wasp protected in amber may have used their stomach to understand their eggs to understand other insects like a Venus flytrap.

“This is anything opposite that I have seen before. It is opposite to any wasp or any other insect that is known today,” Lars wilhelmsen In the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Wilhemson and his colleagues have named the wasp Grazing After Charybdis, a marine monster in Homer’s epic poem OdissiThe insect lived in the Creteseous period about 99 million years ago.

Researchers used an X-ray imaging technique, micro-CT scanning to examine the 16 female wash attached to the amber found in the Kachin region of Myanmar.

All the wasp had three flap in their absonation, which had a structure. It was preserved to different positions, sometimes open and sometimes partially closed, suggesting that the worms were a moving, greedy tool when alive.

“It was very exciting, but it was also a challenge, because how can you explain how this animal works when you have nothing like this today?” Wilhelmsen says.

So he and his colleagues took examples of living and extinct wasp and analyzed their characteristics. This showed that Amber had modern-parasitic species of superfamily crocidoidia, the closest analogs to the wasp. These include cuckoo vasaps, of which larvae live as parasites on hosts, eventually killing them because they consume them.

Key to behavior S. Chordis A trap-like lower flap of the abdomen, which can act like a Venus flytrap plant, says Wilhemson. “Long trigger hair like these fans, perhaps sensory hair, which is spread by this lower flap. If it was resting on the surface and the host was running in the past, it would touch these hair and then the wasp probably quickly launched backwards because there was a possible host within the reach.”

He suggests that S. Chordis Must have been ambushed for potential victims such as to jump the nymphs with insects or its mesh and then stopped to stop the host and laying eggs.

“This is really a unique discovery,” says Manual brazidek At Rance University in France. “I feel exceptional stomach stomach Grazing Is there a new solution to a problem that is in all parasitic pests: how do you stop your host while laying your egg or on it? ,