The Life and Times of Diaulomorpha

Diaulomorpha is a fairly typical genus of the diverse micro-wasp family Eulophidae. Like most other eulophids, members of this genus are slender with a relatively soft metasoma. The mesosoma, on the other hand, is tougher, weakly vaulted, and conspicuously reticulate dorsally. Members of the genus are known from Australasia and South America (Bouček 1988).

Body of female Diaulomorpha itea, from Bouček (1988).

Diaulomorpha species are parasitoids of insect larvae that live as miners in leaves. They are known to feed on both Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera larvae; it seems that it is not the identity of the host that attracts them but the lifestyle. They are multivoltine, that is they can go through multiple generations in the course of a year. The breeding cycle and behaviour of a Diaulomorpha species was described by Mazanec (1990) as a parasitoid of the jarrah leafminer Perthida glyphopa, a moth whose larvae attack the leaves of jarrah Eucalyptus marginata.

Mating between males and females occured after a brief courtship ritual in which the pair each extended their wings upwards and beat them up and down. Females located host larvae by running across the leaf surface and drumming the outside of prospective mines with their abdomen. They would then drill into the mine with their ovipositor, though of course the host larva would generally be trying to escape the wasp's attentions; a female might have to drill several holes before successfully piercing the caterpillar. The ovipositor would then be 'stirred' into the host to cause haemolymph and other fluids to leak out of its skin, and the wasp would feed on this fluid through the hole formed by the ovipositor. Egg laying would begin shortly after the wasp had finished feeding. Egg production was relatively slow, with only five or six eggs able to develop within the mother at a time, and the female wasp would lay through a newly created hole into the mine near the selected host. Usually only one egg would be laid in a mine but sometimes multiple eggs would be laid and the emerging larvae would share the host individual. After laying an egg, the female would tap around the laying hole with the tip of her metasoma, presumably depositing some chemical that would signal to other Diaulomorpha females that the mine had already been attacked. The host, meanwhile, would stop feeding after being stabbed with the female's ovipositor and would finally die after about a day and a half. It was around this time that the larva(e) would hatch and commence feeding on its remains.

Though healthy hosts would obviously be preferable, female Diaulomorpha were not above attacking hosts that had already died or had already been parasitised by other wasps. Such hosts were particularly likely to be attacked by young females that had not yet learnt to deal with the defensive actions of a healthy host. Deceased hosts could present a problem in that their bodily fluid pressure had been lost, and the female might have to stab them with her ovipositor several times before she had ingested enough fluid to begin laying. Pre-parasitised hosts were less of a problem as endoparasitic wasp larvae within the host would die after the Diaulomorpha's stab along with the host.

Mazarec (1990) found parasitism levels by Diaulomorpha within the host population to be low. What is more, as host populations increased the level of parasitism would plateau, so the proportion of parasitised hosts was far lower in dense host populations. This presumably resulted from the wasp's low rate of egg production: as host populations increased, the population of wasps did not keep up with it. As such, the role of Diaulomorpha in pest control is probably limited.

REFERENCES

Bouček, Z. 1988. Australasian Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera): A biosystematic revision of genera of fourteen families, with a reclassification of species. CAB International: Wallingford (UK).

Mazanec, Z. 1990. The immature stages and life history of Diaulomorpha sp. (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), a parasitoid of Perthida glyphopa Common (Lepidoptera: Incurvariidae). Journal of the Australian Entomological Society 29: 147–159.

Sympiesis

Female Sympiesis, copyright Lyle J. Buss.

We often imagine that parasites select their hosts largely on the basis of type: one parasite prefers caterpillars, for instance, while another prefers flies. However, sometimes what is important is not so much what type of host a parasite attacks, as where they find it. The wasp in the photo above represents Sympiesis, a sizeable genus (the Universal Chalcidoidea Database lists over 130 species) of microscopic parasitoid wasps found worldwide. The majority of Sympiesis larvae attack the larvae of Lepidoptera, but others feed on the larvae of Diptera. A few have been recorded as hyperparasitoids, attacking the larvae of other parasitic wasps. The main thing that all hosts of Sympiesis have in common, though, is that they are all found in secluded, vegetative habitats: either mining in leaves, or in retreats formed by rolling or tying leaves (sometimes boring in stems). Depending on species, Sympiesis larvae may be either ectoparasites or endoparasites: those species feeding on leaf-rolling hosts tend to be ectoparasites, while those targeting leaf-miners are endoparasites (Miller 1970).

Sympiesis is a genus of the chalcid family Eulophidae. Eulophids used to be the subject of some disagreement between myself and a colleague of mine about their ease of recognition. Eulophids are a diverse group in appearance, coming in a bewildering array of shapes and colours. However, I have always maintained that they are nevertheless readily recognisable. Whatever their appearance, eulophids seem to always a distinctive stamp of 'eulophid-ness'. They tend to be slender, relatively soft-bodied wasps, often with a flat top to the gaster. Most identification guides will tell you to look out for their four-segmented tarsi (as opposed to the five-segmented tarsi of most other chalcid wasps); eulophid tarsi are rendered even more recognisable by the point that, though they have less segments than the tarsi of other chalcids, they are not any shorter so the individual tarsal segments are all relatively long. The features distinguishing Sympiesis from other eulophid genera are, of course, finer and require fairly close examination: notably, they have relatively few dorsal setae (only four on the scutellum) (Bouček 1988). As far as I know, they are mostly metallic green in coloration.

Male Sympiesis, showing branched antennae, from here.

As with many eulophids, males of Sympiesis usually differ from females in having long branches on the antennae. However, the first species of the genus to be described, the European Sympiesis sericeicornis, is distinctive in that these antennal branches are much reduced so that the males' antennae look little different from the females' (if you look very closely, they still have just a bit of a finger on each of the middle antennal segments). This led historically to a fair bit of confusion in the recognition of Sympiesis, with many species originally being placed in segregate genera (often with tongue-twistery compound names such as Asympiesiella or Sympiesonecremnus; thank you again, Alexandre Girault). Even now, the status of Sympiesis with regard to some related smaller genera could do with further investigation; we may yet see it grow again.

REFERENCES

Bouček, Z. 1988. Australasian Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera): A biosystematic revision of genera of fourteen families, with a reclassification of species. CAB International: Wallingford (UK).

Miller, C. D. 1970. The Nearctic species of Pnigalio and Sympiesis (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae). Memoirs of the Entomological Society of Canada 102 (Suppl. S68): 5–121.