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Photo#994197
wasp - Ichneumon annulatorius - female

wasp - Ichneumon annulatorius - Female
Cross Plains, Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
September 3, 2014
Size: ~14mm - body

Images of this individual: tag all
wasp - Ichneumon annulatorius - female wasp - Ichneumon annulatorius - female

Moved
Moved from Ichneumon Wasps.

 
wasp
I never would have guessed that the male and female of this species were related. They look so different.

 
Re the Males
By unusual coincidence, today in a book I am reading that concerns human beliefs has brief section entitled "Mimicking Patterns", I encountered this statement: "predators who normally avoid eating dangerous yellow and black insects also avoid harmless insects with similar yellow and black markings." The paper this information is attributed to is S. Werner and H. Elke, "On the Function of Warning Coloration: A Black and Yellow Pattern Inhibits Prey-Attack by Naive Domestic Chicks," Behavior Ecology and Sociobiology 16 (1985): 249.

 
Interesting. Thanks for the
Interesting. Thanks for the additional information.

 
Sexual Dimorphism
It is among various genera of the Ichneumoni that sexual dimorphism is most pronounced. Males tend to patrol while trying to detect the pheromones of newly emerging females, while the females tend to be colored and specialized morphologically (e.g. antennae are shortened and thickened) for crawling among foliage and into leaf litter in search of fresh pupae or prepupae of their lepidopterous hosts. Females of this tribe also are more likely to spend the winter hibernating after having mated in the fall. Just why the dimorphism should be most pronounced in this tribe, though, doesn't seem obvious, as the hosts for the entire subfamily are fresh pupae and prepupae of Lepidoptera.

Moved

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