An ancient fly whose grubs lived in other insects

Jan 16th 2016 | The Economist

ONE of the nastier ways an insect can make its living is as a parasitoid. Female parasitoids lay their eggs inside other insects, usually at the larval stage of the host's life cycle. The grub that hatches then eats its host alive, reserving the vital organs until the moment when it is, itself, ready to pupate. Most parasitoids are wasps, but some are flies, and this fossil, dubbed Zhenia xiai by its discoverer, Bo Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, is an early example of such an insect.

The specimen shown, which Dr Bo describes in Naturwissenschaften, was trapped 99m years ago in tree resin that has solidified into amber, in a part of the world now known as northern Myanmar. Its sticky death has preserved features, such as the needle-like egg-laying organ, called an ovipositor, at its rear, and the host-grasping claws on its legs, that are often characteristic of a parasitoid way of life.

Zhenia xiai belongs to the Eremochaetidae, a family which palaeoentomologists have long suspected were parasitoids, but whose previously known representatives were not well-enough preserved for them to be sure. Now, thanks to Dr Bo's discovery, they are.

Source: www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21688373-ancient-fly-whose-grubs-lived-other-insects-getting-point

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