Terrifying Chestburster Parasitic Wasps Found In The United States
For those who have a fear of flying, stinging creatures, nature has found a way to make these little pests a bit more terrifying. Researchers in Mississippi recently discovered a species of parasitic wasps straight out of Ridley Scott’s Alien. Officially known as a parasitoid wasp, the Syntretus perlmani is known for maturing inside the bodies of living flies and then emerging from their chests when they are ready for their next life stage.
Parasitic Wasps Targeting Fruit Flies
Scientists in the southern state discovered the parasitic wasps when collecting specimens of common fruit flies (Drosophila affinis). This is the only known species of wasp that targets adult fruit flies. Other wasp varieties find their way through larval and pupa stages.
How the parasitic wasps infect adult fruit flies with their brood is something out of a science fiction film. The female wasp will land on the intended recipient and gently thrust her stinger into the fly’s body. This deposits her egg inside the fly’s abdomen, where it uses the safety of the fly’s body to grow and develop.
Bursts Through The Side Of The Fly
The parasitic wasp larva will take around 18 days to grow to larval maturation. At this point, the adult wasp will burst through the side of its living incubator and crawl off, leaving its host for dead.
To show just how cruel nature can be, the host fruit fly will sometimes live for hours before finally succumbing to its injuries.
After exiting their host, the parasitic wasps will bury themselves and undergo a cocoon stage for an additional 23 days before emerging as a fully grown adult.
A Lucky Find?
The discovery of the Alien-like parasitic wasps was somewhat serendipitous. The research team was looking for parasitic worms inside the specimens of fruit flies that they had collected when they stumbled across a wasp larva inside of one of them.
At first, the team members thought this to just be a statistical outlier, as one researcher pointed out that ” if you dissect thousands of flies, you will see some things that are strange and odd, and you’ll never see them again.”
Present In Other Flies As Well
But the researchers continued their work only to discover that more and more of their collected fruit flies had the same parasitic wasp larva inside of their abdomens.
The team was able to confirm its discovery after performing a series of lab experiments where they would grow adult wasps and study their behaviors. Researchers were also able to determine that these wasps will lay their eggs in other varieties of flies.
Still Spreading?
The lack of a thick exoskeleton makes fruit flies, in particular, a great host for a parasitic wasp to infect with her egg. The wasps seem to prefer the hosts to be in their juvenile stages of development, as they lack wings that would allow them to fly off and avoid infection.
In addition to Mississippi, the research team has found flies in Alabama and North Carolina that have hosted the parasitic wasp eggs. It’s believed that this species has spread to more states along the southern and southeastern United States, however, attributed to studying its DNA.
Sources: Nature, Live Science
