(Image originally published in Coehlo et al 2019, Journal of Insect Science) An eastern cicada killer ( Sphecius speciosus) laid its egg on the cicada below its right middle leg. This paralyzed Tibicen tibicen cicada was found in a trap nest created by researchers at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, in the course of a study on kleptoparasitism in cicada-killer wasps. Both places a have large colonies of cicada-killer burrows, at Ruby in sandy tailings of an abandoned lead mine and at Lafayette in fine-clay soil of architectural berms next to a building. speciosus) on the bucolic campus of Lafayette College. convallis) with those of eastern cicada killer ( S. Losing cicadas to their shady sisters is not a phenomenon restricted to the Ruby vicinity, according the paper, which compared freeloading females of the ghost town’s Pacific cicada killers ( S. Hastings, Ph.D., of Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky. Holliday, Ph.D., of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania and Jon M. Coehlo, Ph.D., of Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois Charles W. It is a strategy by which females that may have difficulty obtaining their own prey may pursue so as to still be able to reproduce, according to a study published today in of the Journal of Insect Science. If the wasp leaves its burrow to hunt again without laying an egg on the cicada it has stored, another female wasp may sneak in and surreptitiously lay its own egg on the host. These birds, kingbirds and roadrunners, snatch nearly half the annual cicadas carried by female cicada-killer wasps ( Sphecius spp.) to feed their young upon hatching in their underground brood chambers.Įven when a cicada-killer wasp manages to run the gauntlet of avian attackers, however, researchers afield at Ruby have found its catch remains at risk of yet another kind of theft.
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