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Photo#100427
wingless wasp - Trimorus - female

wingless wasp - Trimorus - Female
Dummer, Coos County, New Hampshire, USA
March 27, 2007
Size: 1.2mm

Images of this individual: tag all
wingless wasp - Trimorus - female wingless wasp - Trimorus - female

Identified by Ovidiu Popovici
on my website here.

Moved
There are marks on it's back where the wings could have been attached. It was funny seeing this jump around like a little springtail.
Richard, thanks for the tribe, and bringing up an interesting point in your comment.

Wingless... or dealated?
As I already told in other comments about the same group, these small Teleasini (genera Hoplogryon, Trimorus and possibly others) are something of an enigma for me.
First, they are somteimes found in huge quantities (e.g., in pitfall traps) in some special biotopes, especially wooded peat bogs, while seldom encountered elsewhere.
Second, both fully winged and wingless forms of exactly same size and color pattern (like this one, who is black with partly reddish legs) coexist. And so-called "wingless" individuals have a quite normal thorax, not reduced like worker ants or many other apterous Apocritan Hymenoptera. Therefore, I suspect these tiny insects - both males and females - emerge as winged but soon shed their wings. Of course, given their extremely small size, witnessing directly the phenomenon on the field is hardly conceivable.

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