| Pimpla rufipes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Male Pimpla cf. rufipes | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Ichneumonidae |
| Genus: | Pimpla |
| Species: | P. rufipes |
| Binomial name | |
| Pimpla rufipes (Miller, 1759) | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Pimpla rufipes, the black slip wasp, is a species of wasp belonging to the family Ichneumonidae. [1] [2] It is distributed across Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. [3] [4]
The species Pimpla rufipes has several synonyms, which include Pimpla hypochondriaca and Pimpla instigator. Pimpla instigator(Fabricius, 1793) has been permanently rejected under the International code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the original name Ichneumon instigatorFabricius, 1793 is a junior homonym of Ichneumon instigatorRossius, 1790, which represents a pimpline species outside of the genus Pimpla. [5]
This species can be found in the following countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Azores, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madeira Islands, Malta, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia & Montenegro , Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. [3] [4] These wasps mainly inhabit hedgerows and vegetated areas. [6]
Pimpla rufipes can reach a length of about 15 mm (0.59 in) with a rather slender body. [6] These wasps are generally black with bright orange legs. The hind legs are larger than the other pairs. The ovipositor is straight, quite short and thick, however the male Pimpla rufipes does not have an ovipositor. These wasps are often mistaken for Apechthis compunctor due to having similar size, and the males of both of the species are indistinguishable from photographs. The main key difference between these two species is the ovipositor: Pimpla rufipes females have a straight ovipositor while Apechthis compunctor females have curved ovipositors. [6] [7]
The front wing of Pimpla rufipes is 5.5 to 15 mm long. Its hind tibia is without a pale submedian band and the abdomen is finely mat to subpolished, usually rather closely dotted with tiny holes. Its first tergite is long, with a prominent dorsal hump centered just beyond the middle. The upper valve of ovipositor is also not or only weakly flattened. [8]
A parasitoid of butterfly and moth larvae and pupae, laying an egg in each one. [9] Pimpla rufipes have preferences in choosing their hosts that are affected by various factors. Research was conducted on cylinders which represent the hosts Pimpla rufipes would normally puncture. The first factor is the texture of the host; smooth cylinders were punctured more often than cylinders that had been roughened with sandpaper. The second factor is colour; the wasps discriminated between yellow and blue cylinders and could remember to associate the colours as a presence of a host, where blue was inherently preferred over yellow. [10] The last known factor is whether or not a cylinder/host is open or closed ended, where only cylinders that were close ended were frequently punctured. [10] These factors are tested by the female wasp using its antennae which send vibrations to make the object resonate before determining if the host will make for a suitable oviposition site. [11] It is still unknown how these vibrations are created from the antennae, and the antennae are not utilized as drumsticks. [11] However it is known that the wasp does not use a stridulatory organ to generate these noises. This is all part of Pimpla rufipes exploratory behaviour, and acoustic probing allow the females to find and locate prey. [11]
Pimpla rufipes is a idiobont endoparasitoid which means that hosts do not mature after parasitisation. Pimpla rufipes goes through five stages as a larva. At its first instar, the larva is already very big, [12] which is why the female can only carry few eggs at a time. Pimpla rufipes goes through morphogical changes at every instar, which mostly last 24 hours each, although the fifth and last instar lasts for around 9 days on average. [13]
The larvae and adult versions of Pimpla rufipes feed on different food. The main hosts of this parasitic wasp are the large white butterfly ( Pieris brassicae ) and the spongy moth ( Lymantria dispar ). [14] The larvae feed on the hosts that have been through parasitisation, one example of which is the tomato moth, Lacanobia oleracea. [13] On the other hand, adults mainly feed on flowers. [6]
Pimpla rufipes is known to have a substantial amount of venom which is cytotoxic (causing cell death) and can paralyze its hosts. [13] This paralysis of its hosts is due to a paralytic polypeptide called pimplin in its venom, [15] which allows for an easy oviposition. Furthermore the venom of Pimpla rufipes has antibacterial properties to prevent bacterial entry into the host, similarly to other idiobont species. [13]
Pimpla rufipes injects venom during oviposition to condition its hosts. The venom is a complex mixture of proteins and polypeptides, which have been identified as enzymes, including phenoloxidase, endopeptidase, aminopeptidase, hydrolase, and angiotensin-converting enzyme. Constituents of the venom seem to possess cytolytic and paralytic factors, but the causes responsible for the effects are still unknown. The venom caused changes regardless of whether an external source of calcium was present, or whether venom was pre-treated with PTU. [16]
Several experiments have been run regarding the venom of Pimpla rufipes, as it is easy to culture on the tomato moth. [13] When pupae of the tomato moth are injected with venom from Pimpla rufipes, they show an increased susceptibility to the fungal entomopathogen Metarhizium anisopliae Sorokin. This fact suggests that the venom of Pimpla rufipes may suppress the cellular immune defense mechanisms of L. oleracea. Injection of host pupae with the venom has a rapid, adverse effect on the normal respiration of L. oleracea. It is possible that severe changes to the host-metabolism may result in a general failure in the hosts' normal immune response defense. [17] These findings are also supported from another experiment also using the tomato moth as a host. As the venom causes a general failure in the host's normal immune response, the venom would have to adversely affect haemocytes. This was shown in the experiment to be the case where "at sublethal doses venom has a potent anti-hemocyte action and can impair hemocyte-mediated immune responses." [18]
The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects, for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typically its form is adapted to functions such as preparing a place for the egg, transmitting the egg, and then placing it properly. For most insects, the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but for many parasitic species, it is a piercing organ as well.
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.
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.
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 ichneumon wasps, ichneumonid wasps, ichneumonids, or Darwin wasps, are a family of parasitoid wasps of the insect order Hymenoptera. They are one of the most diverse groups within the Hymenoptera with roughly 25,000 species described as of 2016. However, this likely represents less than a quarter of their true richness as reliable estimates are lacking, along with much of the most basic knowledge about their ecology, distribution, and evolution. It is estimated that there are more species in this family than there are species of birds and mammals combined. 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.
Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a Costa Rican parasitoid wasp whose host is the spider Plesiometa argyra. The wasp is unusual in modifying the spider's web building behavior to make a web made of very strong lines designed to support the wasp's cocoon without breaking in the rain.
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.
Megarhyssa, also known as giant ichneumonid wasps, giant ichneumons, or stump stabbers, is a genus of large ichneumon wasps, with some species known for having the longest ovipositors of any insects. They are idiobiont endoparasitoids of the larvae of wood-boring horntail wasps. The ovipositor can be mistaken for a large stinger. This is a genus of holometabolous insects within subfamily Rhyssinae that includes 37 species and belongs to Ichneumonidae, the family of wasps with the highest biodiversity in the world.
Glyptapanteles is a genus of endoparasitoid wasps found in all continents, except Antarctica. The larvae of Glyptapanteles species are able to manipulate their hosts into serving as bodyguards.
Pimplinae are a worldwide subfamily of the parasitic wasp family Ichneumonidae.
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.
Xanthocryptus novozealandicus, the lemon tree borer parasite, is a wasp in the family Ichneumonidae. It is a native insect of New Zealand. It is also found in Australia and New Guinea. Females hunt for larvae of wood-boring beetles around March, including the lemon tree borer, a native cerambycid that tunnels into citrus trees, grapes and many native species. When a suitable host is found, the female pushes her ovipositor through the wood and injects her eggs into the grub. This has the incidental benefit of helping to control some pests. X. novozealandicus prefers to prey on second year lemon tree borer larvae. This specific parasite prefers to prey on larger second year larvae due to its larger size.
Rhyssa persuasoria, also known as the sabre wasp, is a species belonging to the family Ichneumonidae subfamily Rhyssinae. Members of this subfamily, including those of Rhyssa and the allied Megarhyssa, are also known collectively as giant ichneumonid wasps or giant ichneumons.
Megarhyssa nortoni, also known as Norton's giant ichneumonid wasp or the western giant ichneumonid wasp, is a species of large ichneumon wasp.
Pimpla are a worldwide genus of the parasitic wasp family Ichneumonidae.
Megarhyssa macrurus, also known as the long-tailed giant ichneumonid wasp or long-tailed giant ichneumon wasp, is a species of large ichneumon wasp. It is a parasitoid, notable for its extremely long ovipositor which it uses to deposit an egg into a tunnel in dead wood bored by its host, the larva of a similarly large species of horntail.
Pimpla turionellae is a species of ichneumon wasp in the family Ichneumonidae. Its host is the larvae and pupae of Galleria mellonella