A new species of wasp was named Xenomorph because of its parasitic life cycle, which is reminiscent of the predatory behavior of the monster of the saga of the movie Alien.
Referred to as, Dolichogenidea xenomorfa injects its eggs into live caterpillars and the larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside, exploding once they have eaten until they what they are satisfied. The wasp larvae turn into adult wasps and continue to look for other caterpillars to lay their eggs.
This species is one of three recently documented wasps that are parasitoids, parasites that must kill their host to complete their cycle.
" Dolichogenidea xenomorph acts as a parasite on caterpillars similar to the fictional creature of Alien in its human host," says lead researcher Erinn Fagan-Jeffries, a student. Ph.D. at the Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia. Researchers say the diet of mammals has changed with the disappearance of dinosaurs
"The wasp is also black and shining like the alien monster, and has some strange characteristics for the genus, so xenomorph, which means "strange shape", is fine. "
Parasitoid wasps are said to have inspired the creation of the xenomorph extraterrestrial in the film franchise. In their natural environment, these wasps play an important role in regulating the populations of their host insects, and have been used in agricultural crops to control caterpillar pests.
"With less than 5 mm Long the Xenomorph Dolichogenidea may seem to lack the power of his formidable namesake, but its size is relative: for a caterpillar host, it is an incredible predator" , explains Fagan-Jeffries.
The xenomorph of Dolichogenidea was collected from Queanbeyan, New South Wales and South Western Australia but it is likely that it has a wider distribution throughout Australia.It has an extremely long ovipositor, a needle-shaped structure that female wasps use to inject their eggs into their host. The host of this species is a caterpillar that feeds on eucalyptus leaves.
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These three new species are among the thousands of more wasps Australia still waiting for a description and names. "We collected more than 500 wasps from a particular subfamily, from all over Australia, and determined that there were over 200 different species in this relatively small number of specimens," explains Austin. for Australia, so we duplicated at least the number of known species It is important to document our biodiversity to be able to make informed conservation decisions about our environment Some of these wasps can potentially be agents of control pests but we do not know them yet, "he explained.
