{"id":3648,"date":"2014-03-11T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/wp\/2014\/03\/11\/the-brief-lives-and-loves-of-male-strepsipterans\/"},"modified":"2019-11-14T21:42:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T21:42:54","slug":"the-brief-lives-and-loves-of-male-strepsipterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esc-sec.ca\/fr\/2014\/03\/11\/the-brief-lives-and-loves-of-male-strepsipterans\/","title":{"rendered":"The brief lives and loves of male strepsipterans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This wasp has a problem! Three relatively enormous parasitic strepsipterans are occupying her abdomen…Photo by Sean McCann.<\/p><\/div>\n

Who wouldn’t want to get to know the <\/span>Strepsiptera<\/a>? These animals are extremely odd, being obligate endoparasites of other insects, with a free-flying male and an eyeless, wingless female that never leaves the abdomen of her host. Different families of these parasites infect different hosts, ranging from silverfish and cockroaches to solitary and social wasps, leafhoppers, and froghoppers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Allow me to introduce Xenos peckii<\/em>, a strepsipteran parasite of\u00a0Polistes fuscatus<\/a><\/em>, the Northern Paper Wasp. \u00a0As an entomologist, I have long been interested in these little-studied insects, so I was thrilled to get to help my colleague Mike Hrabar<\/a> in his investigation their life history and reproduction.<\/p>\n

Mike collected a several colonies of infected wasps from Maine and brought them back to the lab to observe their emergence, flight and mating behaviour in a systematic way. We used high speed videography and careful record keeping to document their life history in closer detail than had ever previously been recorded.<\/p>\n

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Not really bling. This wasp sports a heavy infestation of four developing Xenos<\/em>, costing vast amounts of resources. \u00a0Photo by Sean McCann.<\/p><\/div>\n

From my perspective, one of the coolest things we learned is that the free-flying male opens his puparium by means of blade-like mandibles, which are used to cut along a zone of weakness in the pupal cap, functioning like a tiny can opener!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Head of male Xenos peckii<\/em>. Note the scissor-like mandibles and the large and unusual compound eyes. Photo by Mike Hrabar. Figure 3G from Hrabar et al. 2014<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Check out the video below to see the male\u2019s little mandibles working the cap open.<\/p>\n

[youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aCeEsXVNiOY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]<\/p>\n

These little troopers fly immediately upon emergence, in stark contrast with most other insects, which need time to inflate and harden their wings. In fact, once the males begin beating their wings, they remain in flight continuously except for a brief period during mating.<\/p>\n