Tomato hornworm with wasp parasites

[padkison]

Pulled this hornworm off the tomato plants. It is covered with parasitic wasp cocoons. Apparently a wasp lays its eggs inside the hornworm, the eggs hatch, the larva eat the insides, eventually pop out on the skin as cocoons. By the time a hornworm looks like this, he's about toast. Cocoons will hatch out off a usually dead hornworm.

Like the movie "Alien".

 

[OGIGA]

Hmm, I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing. I hate tomato horn worms but I think wasps are worse because they can attack mantises. Let's just solve the problem by having mantises get rid of both the horn worms and the wasps.

 

[Rick]

Quite common actually. When I was growing up on a farm we found those all the time.

 

[captainmerkin]

a lot of parasitic wasps will only target one specific animal.

For example jewel wasps only go for american cockroaches (cant remember scientific name)

they lay the eggs on the side of the abdomen generally and then cut off the antanae (this makes the roaches unable to fuction properly and stand totally still unless put on their backs) these will hatch and commence eating the insect and then pupate..

then they burst out of the insect as a nearly fully grown wasp..

crazy stuff! so glad Im not a roach

 

[Sparky]

YES! I love those kind of things! I like to keep the waps together in a big jar and i'll get some caterpillars from my garden and put them together.

You can see the waps injecting eggs into the caterpillar and then a few weeks later you get. . . PARASITES!

 

[Kruszakus]

Little bastards! Parasites like that plague my wax moth colonies! I hate them!