Hymenoptera is a large order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are parasitic.
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 Tachinidae are a large and variable family of true flies within the insect order Diptera, with more than 8,200 known species and many more to be discovered. Over 1300 species have been described in North America alone. Insects in this family commonly are called tachinid flies or simply tachinids. As far as is known, they all are protelean parasitoids, or occasionally parasites, of arthropods, usually other insects. The family is known from many habitats in all zoogeographical regions and is especially diverse in South America.
Apocrita is 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.
Wolbachia is a genus of intracellular bacteria that infects mainly arthropod species, including a high proportion of insects, and also some nematodes. It is one of the most common parasitic microbes and is possibly the most common reproductive parasite in the biosphere. Its interactions with its hosts are often complex, and in some cases have evolved to be mutualistic rather than parasitic. Some host species cannot reproduce, or even survive, without Wolbachia colonisation. One study concluded that more than 16% of neotropical insect species carry bacteria of this genus, and as many as 25 to 70% of all insect species are estimated to be potential hosts.
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.
The Phoridae are a family of small, hump-backed flies resembling fruit flies. Phorid flies can often be identified by their escape habit of running rapidly across a surface rather than taking to the wing. This behaviour is a source of one of their alternate names, scuttle fly. Another vernacular name, coffin fly, refers to Conicera tibialis. About 4,000 species are known in 230 genera. The most well-known species is cosmopolitan Megaselia scalaris. At 0.4 mm in length, the world's smallest fly is the phorid Euryplatea nanaknihali.
Trichogramma is a genus of minute polyphagous wasps that are endoparasitoids of insect eggs. Trichogramma is one of around 80 genera from the family Trichogrammatidae, with over 200 species worldwide.
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.
Nasonia vitripennis is one of four known species under the genus Nasonia - small parasitoid wasps that afflict the larvae of parasitic carrion flies such as blowflies and flesh flies, which themselves are parasitic toward nestling birds. It is the best known and most widely studied of the parasitoid wasps, and their study forms a vital part of the information used to describe the order Hymenoptera, along with information from bees and ants. This parasitoid behaviour makes the wasps an interest for the development of biopesticide and biological systems for controlling unwanted insects.
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as bees and ants are deeply nested within the wasps, having evolved from wasp ancestors. Wasps that are members of the clade Aculeata can sting their prey.
Cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) is a phenomenon that results in sperm and eggs being unable to form viable offspring. The effect arises from changes in the gamete cells caused by intracellular parasites like Wolbachia, which infect a wide range of insect species. As the reproductive incompatibility is caused by bacteria that reside in the cytoplasm of the host cells, it is referred to as cytoplasmic incompatibility. In 1971, Janice Yen and A. Ralph Barr of UCLA demonstrated the etiologic relationship of Wolbachia infection and cytoplasmic incompatibility in Culex mosquitos when they found that eggs were killed when the sperm of Wolbachia-infected males fertilized infection-free eggs.
Phytomyza ilicis, the holly leaf miner, is a leaf mining fly in the family Agromyzidae, whose larvae burrow into leaves of the holly tree leaving characteristic pale trails or leaf mines.
Arsenophonus nasoniae is a species of bacterium which was previously isolated from Nasonia vitripennis, a species of parasitoid wasp. These wasps are generalists which afflict the larvae of parasitic carrion flies such as blowflies, houseflies and flesh flies. A. nasoniae belongs to the phylum Proteobacteria and family Morganellaceae.The genus Arsenophonus, has a close relationship to the Proteus (bacterium) rather than to that of Salmonella and Escherichia. The genus is composed of gammaproteobacterial, secondary-endosymbionts which are gram-negative. Cells are non-flagellated, non-motile, non-spore forming and form long to highly filamentous rods. Cellular division is exhibited through septation. The name 'Arsenophonus nasoniae gen. nov., sp. nov.' was therefore proposed for the discovered bacterium due to its characteristics and its microbial interaction with N. vitripennis. The type strain of A. nasoniae is Strain SKI4.
Arsenophonus is a genus of Morganellaceae, of the Gammaproteobacteria. Members of the Arsenophonus genus are increasingly discovered bacterial symbionts of arthropods that are estimated to infect over 5% of arthropod species globally and form a variety of relationships with hosts across the mutualism parasitism continuum. Arsenophonus bacteria have been identified in a diversity of insect taxa, including economically important species such as the Western honey bee and the rice pest Nilaparvata lugens.
Chilo infuscatellus, the yellow top borer or sugarcane shoot borer, is a moth in the family Crambidae. It was described by the Dutch entomologist Samuel Constantinus Snellen van Vollenhoven in 1890. It is found in India, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and on Java and Timor.
The Opiinae are a subfamily of braconid parasitoid wasps with over 1300 described species. Several species have been used in biocontrol programs against fruit flies and Agromyzidae flies. They are closely related to the Alysiinae.
Diachasmimorpha longicaudata is a solitary species of parasitoid wasp and an endoparasitoid of tephritid fruit fly larvae. D. longicaudata is native to many countries in Southeast Asia and subtropical regions and has also been introduced to many other countries as a biological control agent. It is now considered the most extensively used parasitoid for biocontrol of fruit flies in both the southern portion of the United States and Latin America. D. longicaudata is especially useful for agricultural purposes in the control of fruit flies as it is easily mass-reared and has the ability to infect a variety of hosts within the genus Bactrocera. A negative factor in its use as a biocontrol agent is that it is known to oviposit in grapefruit in the state of Florida. This has resulted in quarantines on grapefruit shipped internationally as well as domestically. Research is ongoing to determine whether D. longicaudata is actually a single species, or if it contains multiple species. It is likely multiple biological species separated by both reproductive isolation and morphological characteristics such as wing geometry.
Liriomyza trifolii, known generally as the American serpentine leafminer or celery leafminer, is a species of leaf miner fly in the family Agromyzidae.
The Drosophila quinaria species group is a speciose lineage of mushroom-feeding flies studied for their specialist ecology, their parasites, population genetics, and the evolution of immune systems. Quinaria species are part of the Drosophila subgenus.
