A parasitoid is an organism that spends part of its life living inside or attached to another ‘host’ organism. Often, in general entomology classes the scenes from the “Alien” movies are used as imagery to describe the parasitoid-host relationship (i.e., the xenomorph).

I realized that I have several posts on woodwasps (see here too), but never really talked about their biology. Woodwasps have fairly long ovipositors that could potentially fool people into thinking they have long ’stingers’, but in all reality they don’t sting at all. Woodwasps are attracted to dead or dieing trees and use those long ovipositors to lay eggs into the wood of the tree. When they lay eggs in the trees, they also inject fungus and mucus. As the larvae develop they feed on the fungus deposited by the female. Woodwasps have several different natural enemies, a couple of them being parasitoids. Ibalia is one such parasitoid. Ibalia is attracted to the fungus and eggs of the woodwasp and the female deposits an egg of her own inside an egg or first instar larva of the woodwasp. The Ibalia larva develops within and eats the woodwasp larva from inside out, eventually killing it.

Upon opening up the body cavity of a woodwasp larva I was preparing to dissect, I was greeted by something unexpected…a little Ibalia larva.

A striking resemblance to the xenomorph, eh?

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