Angela Chuang

(1/2) Some more weekend fun-- I've been collecting parasitoids (Philolema sp.) of the brown widow and this weekend a new species of wasp emerged from an egg sac!

Not sure what it is yet, but schmaybe Aradophagus? Very cute to watch under the microscope in any case...

Dec 18, 2022 at 11:37pmWeb
Show threadAngela ChuangDec 18, 2022

(2/2) In my attempt to find records of Aradophagus parasitizing L. geometricus, I came across this note (yeah, this is the entire thing) and ... imagine the honor of your home being like, the one place where a rare wasp is found abundantly, lol. New life goalsss

#wasps #spiders

Show threadColin PurringtonDec 19, 2022
@arachnonaut Rearing parasitoids is such good fun. I was curious about Aradophagus so looked it up, and one paper mentioned that some of the members are flattened and thus possibly go after flattened egg cases. The one pic on #iNaturalist certainly looks flattened. Yours looks pretty normal. Please keep us posted.
https://zenodo.org/record/24510/files/1728.pdf
Show threadAngela ChuangDec 19, 2022

@colinpurrington Thank you for the paper, Colin! Some spiderlings hatched shortly after the wasps and actually caught 2 or 3 of them and so I removed those and examined them. They actually are very flat! I had thought that was a feature of them being slightly mangled from the handling, ha.

But I agree that it's hard to tell and I'll rely on someone with more expertise to make the final call. I reached out to an acquaintance who specifically works on Scelionids, esp. Aradophagus, who parasitize spiders so I'm hopeful he'll make an ID for us! I'll update whenever that happens (could be weeks, months, who knows)...

Show threadColin PurringtonDec 19, 2022
@arachnonaut I'll be here, waiting.
Show threadAngela ChuangDec 28, 2022
@colinpurrington Update: The wasp expert says this is a male Baeus! Apparently only males emerged from this egg sac, so the eggs may have been unfertilized. I haven't otherwise seen them emerge from any other Latrodectus geometricus egg sacs I have collected in my area, so perhaps they're not common...
Show threadColin PurringtonDec 30, 2022
@arachnonaut Ahh, I recognize that genus name. I found wasps once in a salticid egg sac and briefly wondered they were Baeus. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8800466
Genus Idris

Idris from Zolfo Springs, FL, USA on November 13, 2017 at 09:30 PM by Colin Purrington. I was taking photographs of some freshly hatched jumping spiders when this wasp came into view. S...

iNaturalist
Show threadAngela ChuangDec 30, 2022

@colinpurrington Oh neat, and this was even from Florida! If you ever find any more Idris, Baeus, or Aradophagus, the expert who IDed my wasps would probably really appreciate specimens.

And yeah, finding a female Baeus is on my bucket list now!

Show threadAlbert CardonaDec 19, 2022
@arachnonaut How interesting, a wasp that parasitises spider egg sacks—one for #entomology #insects #wasplove #hymenoptera #parasitoids #spiders
Show threadAngela ChuangDec 19, 2022

@albertcardona Yes, and parasitism seems fairly high in some cases too!

Also, I see you work on Drosophila. Have you heard of acrocerids? These flies directly parasitize spiders; for a while in grad school about a quarter of my labmate's field-collected grass spiders would have acrocerids emerging from them!

Show threadAlbert CardonaDec 19, 2022
@arachnonaut Never heard of them, how fascinating: so acrocerids are flies that are parasitoids of spiders? Then I expect there will be parasitoid wasps that parasitise such flies. Is this known?
Show threadAlbert CardonaDec 19, 2022

@arachnonaut From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acroceridae

#Acroceridae "a small family of odd-looking flies...hump-backed appearance with a strikingly small head...with a long proboscis for accessing nectar...common names are small-headed flies or hunch-back flies...Many are bee or wasp mimics are parasitoids of spiders...sometimes known as spider flies"

"cosmopolitan in distribution, but nowhere abundant"

Only 1742 observations world wide at #iNaturalist !

#entomology #diptera

Acroceridae - Wikipedia

Show threadAngela ChuangDec 28, 2022
@albertcardona Yeah, they're a really distinctive-looking group! I wonder how easy it is to find one outside of rearing them from their hosts though.
Show threadAlbert CardonaDec 28, 2022
@arachnonaut Indeed, that’s likely why beetles are well-known and every XIX century naturalist had a large collection of them, whereas parasitoids—flies and wasps—are largely unknown.