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 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.
Beneficial insects are any of a number of species of insects that perform valued services like pollination and pest control. The concept of beneficial is subjective and only arises in light of desired outcomes from a human perspective. In farming and agriculture, where the goal is to raise selected crops, insects that hinder the production process are classified as pests, while insects that assist production are considered beneficial. In horticulture and gardening; pest control, habitat integration, and 'natural vitality' aesthetics are the desired outcome with beneficial insects.
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.
Megarhyssa 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.
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 their common ancestor is shared by bees and ants. Many wasps, those in the clade Aculeata, can sting their insect prey.
In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus classified the arthropods, including insects, arachnids and crustaceans, among his class "Insecta". Insects with membranous wings, including bees, wasps and ants were brought together under the name Hymenoptera.
Megarhyssa nortoni is a species of large ichneumon wasp.
Ichneumon is a genus of parasitic wasps in the family Ichneumonidae.
Diadegma insulare is a wasp first described by Ezra Townsend Cresson in 1865. No subspecies are listed. It is a parasitoid of the diamondback moth, which is a pest of cruciferous crops.
Amblyteles armatorius is a species of parasitic wasp in the family Ichneumonidae first described by Johann Reinhold Forster in 1771.
Ichneumon sarcitorius is a species of wasp belonging to the family Ichneumonidae subfamily Ichneumoninae.
Ichneumon unicinctus is a species of wasp in the genus Ichneumon. It is endemic to Madagascar, Mauritius and Réunion.
Megarhyssa macrurus, is a species of large ichneumon wasp.
Nysson spinosus, the large-spurred digger wasp, is a species of cleptoparasitic wasp of the family Crabronidae which is found in the Palearctic.
Therion circumflexum is a species of ichneumon wasp in the family Ichneumonidae.
Metopius is a cosmopolitan genus of parasitoid ichneumon wasps in the subfamily Metopiinae. They lay eggs inside caterpillars of Lepidoptera that are found in leaf rolls, and the adult wasps later emerge from the pupa. They are black and yellow striped and reach over 2 cm (0.79 in) in length. Their coloring may be mimicking potter wasps. Metopius spp. make a buzzing noise when captured.
Xanthopimpla is a genus of parasitoid wasps belonging to the family Ichneumonidae.
