Due to current construction in the OSU Insect Collection I am temporarily unable to fulfill special requests. Consequently, you now receive a jewel from the Orient, Trichacoides (Hymenoptera: Platygastridae: Platygastrinae). If you ever are fortunate enough to sort the contents of insect traps from Southeast Asia you will probably find many of these tiny wasps. This genus is easily identified by the spines covering its mesoscutellum (see close up image).
The general life history of the Platygastrinae was previously stated in the Piestopleura edition of Insect Image of the Week but it is here repeated for new recipients and those of you who may have forgotten.
Members of the subfamily Platygastrinae parasitize the eggs or larvae of small flies (Cecidomyiidae) that form galls in plant tissue. The wasp egg does not hatch until the fly larvae is full grown, at which point it develops rapidly and consumes its host. In cases where the host is much larger than the wasp, the egg will divide many times resulting in identical clones that allow many wasps to form from a single egg. This is known as polyembryony.
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