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Parasitism is a symbiotic relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism, trophically transmitted parasitism, vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation.
In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation.
The Apocrita are a suborder of insects in the order Hymenoptera. It includes wasps, bees, and ants, and consists of many families. It contains the most advanced hymenopterans and is distinguished from Symphyta by the narrow "waist" (petiole) formed between the first two segments of the actual abdomen; the first abdominal segment is fused to the thorax, and is called the propodeum. Therefore, it is general practice, when discussing the body of an apocritan in a technical sense, to refer to the mesosoma and metasoma rather than the "thorax" and "abdomen", respectively. The evolution of a constricted waist was an important adaption for the parasitoid lifestyle of the ancestral apocritan, allowing more maneuverability of the female's ovipositor. The ovipositor either extends freely or is retracted, and may be developed into a stinger for both defense and paralyzing prey. Larvae are legless and blind, and either feed inside a host or in a nest cell provisioned by their mothers.
The superfamily Ichneumonoidea contains one extinct and three extant families, including the two largest families within Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae and Braconidae. The group is thought to contain as many as 100,000 species, many of which have not yet been described. Like other parasitoid wasps, they were long placed in the "Parasitica", variously considered as an infraorder or an unranked clade, now known to be paraphyletic.
The Ichneumonidae, also known as the ichneumon wasps or ichneumonids, is a parasitoid wasp family within the insect order Hymenoptera. This insect family is among the most species-rich branches of the tree of life. At the same time, it is one of the groups for which our knowledge most severely lags behind their actual diversity. The roughly 25,000 species described today probably represent less than a quarter of their true richness, but reliable estimates are lacking, as is much of the most basic knowledge about their ecology, distribution and evolution. Ichneumonid wasps, with very few exceptions, attack the immature stages of holometabolous insects and spiders, eventually killing their hosts. They thus fulfill an important role as regulators of insect populations, both in natural and semi-natural systems, making them promising agents for biological control.
A hyperparasite is a parasite whose host, often an insect, is also a parasite, often specifically a parasitoid. Hyperparasites are found mainly among the wasp-waisted Apocrita within the Hymenoptera, and in two other insect orders, the Diptera and Coleoptera (beetles). Seventeen families in Hymenoptera and a few species of Diptera and Coleoptera are hyperparasitic. Hyperparasitism developed from primary parasitism, which evolved in the Jurassic period in the Hymenoptera. Hyperparasitism intrigues entomologists because of its multidisciplinary relationship to evolution, ecology, behavior, biological control, taxonomy, and mathematical models.
A polydnavirus (PDV) is a member of the family Polydnaviridae of insect viruses. There are currently 53 species in this family, divided among 2 genera. Polydnaviruses form a symbiotic relationship with parasitoid wasps, but these wasps are themselves parasitic on Lepidoptera. Little or no sequence homology exists between BV and IV, suggesting that the two genera evolved independently for a long time.
Manduca quinquemaculata, the five-spotted hawkmoth, is a brown and gray hawk moth of the family Sphingidae. The caterpillar, often referred to as the tomato hornworm, can be a major pest in gardens; they get their name from a dark projection on their posterior end and their use of tomatoes as host plants. Tomato hornworms are closely related to the tobacco hornworm Manduca sexta. This confusion arises because caterpillars of both species have similar morphologies and feed on the foliage of various plants from the family Solanaceae, so either species can be found on tobacco or tomato leaves. Because of this, the plant on which the caterpillar is found does not indicate its species.
The Braconidae are a family of parasitoid wasps. After the closely related Ichneumonidae, braconids make up the second-largest family in the order Hymenoptera, with about 17,000 recognized species and many thousands more undescribed. One analysis estimated a total between 30,000 and 50,000, and another provided a narrower estimate between 42,000 and 43,000 species.
Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causing the death of these hosts. Different species specialise in hosts from different insect orders, most often Lepidoptera, though some select beetles, flies, or bugs; the spider wasps (Pompilidae) exclusively attack spiders.
Cotesia congregata is a parasitoid wasp of the genus Cotesia. The genus is particularly noted for its use of polydnaviruses. Parasitoids are distinct from true parasites in that a parasitoid will ultimately kill its host or otherwise sterilize it.
Microgastrinae is a subfamily of braconid wasps, encompassing 2,000 described species, with an estimated 5,000-10,000 total species. This makes it one of the richest subfamilies with the most species of parasitoid wasps.
A nudivirus is a large, rod-shaped virus with a circular, double stranded DNA genome of 96–231 kb. The genome encodes 98 to 154 open reading frames. Virions are rod-shaped and when enveloped are up to 382×77 nm.
Green leaf volatiles (GLV) are volatile organic compounds that are released when plants suffer tissue damage. Specifically, they include aldehydes, esters, and alcohols of 6-carbon compounds released after wounding. These compounds are very quickly produced and emitted, and are used by nearly every green plant. Plants constantly release GLVs, but un-stressed plants release them in much smaller amounts. Some of these chemicals act as signaling compounds between either plants of the same species, of other species, or even vastly different lifeforms like insects. Some, although not necessarily all, of these chemicals act essentially as plant pheromones.[12] GLVs also have antimicrobial properties to prevent infection at the site of injury.
Cotesia glomerata, the white butterfly parasite, is a small parasitic wasp species belonging to family Braconidae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 publication 10th edition of Systema Naturae.
Cotesia is a genus of braconid wasps first described by Peter Cameron in 1891. Some species parasitize caterpillars of species considered pests, and are used as biocontrol agents. Cotesia congregata parasitizes the tomato and the tobacco hornworms. C. glomerata and C. rubecula feed on the cabbage white and other white butterfly caterpillars. C. gonopterygis and C. risilis are host-specific and parasitize the common brimstone.
Lysibia nana is a hyperparasitoid wasp that attacks the parasitoid wasp Cotesia glomerata.
Tritrophic interactions, as they relate to plant defense against herbivory, describe the ecological impacts of three trophic levels on each other: the plant, the herbivore, and its natural enemies. They may also be called multitrophic interactions when further trophic levels, such as soil microbes, or hyperparasitoids, are considered. Tritrophic interactions join pollination and seed dispersal as vital biological functions which plants perform via cooperation with animals.
Cotesia rubecula is a parasitoid wasp from the large wasp family Braconidae.
The Cardiochilinae are a subfamily of braconid parasitoid wasps. This subfamily has been treated as a tribe of Microgastrinae in the past. Some species including Toxoneuron nigriceps have been used in biocontrol programs.
References
- ↑ "Species Cotesia vestalis (Haliday)". University of Kentucky . Retrieved 8 August 2011.
Recently, Shaw (2003) validated the name C. vestalis as the senior synonym of C. plutellae (Kurdjumov); therefore any prior literature referring to this species will use the name C. plutellae.
- ↑ Robbie D. Girling; Alex Stewart-Jones; Julie Dherbecourt; Joanna T. Staley; Denis J. Wright; Guy M. Poppy (2011). "Parasitoids select plants more heavily infested with their caterpillar hosts: a new approach to aid interpretation of plant headspace volatiles". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . 278 (1718): 2646–2653. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2725. PMC 3136836 . PMID 21270031.
- ↑ Chen, Ya-feng; Gao, Fei; Ye, Xi-qian; Wei, Shu-jun; Shi, Min; Zheng, Hua-jun; Chen, Xue-xin (2011). "Deep sequencing of Cotesia vestalis bracovirus reveals the complexity of a polydnavirus genome". Virology . Elsevier. 414 (1): 42–50. doi:10.1016/j.virol.2011.03.009. ISSN 0042-6822. PMID 21470650. S2CID 9668638.
