A specimen of sirenobethylus chariybdis preserved in amber
Qiong Wu
An extraordinary extinct was found preserved in amber may have used its abdomen to grasp other insects like a venus flytrap before laying its on them.
“It's unlike anything i've ever see before. It's unlike any wasp or any other insect that is known today,” Says Lars Vilhelmsen At the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
Vilhelmsen and his colleagues have named the wasp Sirenobethylus charybdis After Charybdis, A Sea Monster in Homer's EPIC POEM The odysseyThe Insect Live Almost 99 Million Years ago in the Cretaceous Period.
The Researchers used micro-cont scanning, an x-ray imaging technique, to examine 16 female wasps that was encased in amber found in the kachin region of myanmar.
All the wasps had three flaps in their abdomens, making up a clasping structure. It was preserved in different positions, sometimes open and sometimes partly close, suggesting it was a movable, grasping device when the insects were alive.
“It was very exciting, but it was also a challenge, because how can you explain how this animal worked when you have nothing like today?” Says vilhelmsen.
So he and his colleagues took examples of living and extinct wasps and analysed their characteristics. This revised that the closest analogues of the wasps in amber was modern-day parasitoid specials of the superfamily chrysidoidea. These include cuckoo wasps, the larvae of which live
The grasping structure made up of three flaps on the wasp's abdomen
Qiong Wu
The key to the behavior of S. Charybdis May be the lower flap of the trap-like abdomen, which may have actd like a venus flytrap plant, says vilhelmsen. “There these fan-like elongte trigger hairs, probally sensory hairs, extending from this lower flap. IF Maybe the wasp would Quickly Launch Backwards because there was a potential host within Reach. “
He sugges that S. Charybdis Would have waited in ambush for potential victims like flying insects or jumping nymphs with its trap open and then snapped it shut to restrain the host and lay its eggs.
“This is a truly unique discovery,” Says Manuel brazidec At the University of Rennes in France. “What I find extraordinary is that the abdomen of Sirenobethylus charybdis is a brand new solution to a problem that all parasitoid insects have: How do you get your host to stop moving while you lay your eggs on or in it? “
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