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Photo#931334
Mantidfly - Dicromantispa interrupta(?) - Dicromantispa interrupta

Mantidfly - Dicromantispa interrupta(?) - Dicromantispa interrupta
Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, USA
June 3, 2014
Size: ~2.5cm
This mandtidfly parasitized the eggsac of one of my Tigrosa grandis wolf spiders. While it didn't eat all of the eggs and the majority of the young spiderlings actually escaped predation within the eggsac, it did consume a portion of them. I actually did not know that the sac was parasitized until this morning. Yesterday, the female's survived young all hatched out, causing the female to discard her eggsac. I kept the discarded eggsac in a pill jar and noticed this morning that this mantidfly had hatched sometime last night. While they look like mantids (pray mantises), the mantidfly is actually in a completely different order. It does; however, have similar raptoral forelimbs to the mantids. I believe that this is Dicromantispa interrupta from the dark wing patch.

This was the eggsac this individual parasitized:


I found it somewhat interesting that I "discovered" another mantidfly just days after finding and posting an old photo of one here.

Images of this individual: tag all
Mantidfly - Dicromantispa interrupta(?) - Dicromantispa interrupta Mantidfly - Dicromantispa interrupta(?) - Dicromantispa interrupta Mantidfly - Dicromantispa interrupta(?) - Dicromantispa interrupta

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

D. i. is correct

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