Brachypelma

Brachypelma

Wednesday 6 April 2016

Parasitic fly

Ants Canada produced a video about Strongygaster globula, an endoparasite of Lasius neoniger, Lasius niger, and Lasius alienus. The video can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLpz-B9T4F8&nohtml5=False

I seem to have one of these guys as well.  I have a few Lasius alienus queens for sure, so this queen is probably another of them.  She overwintered and didn't produce any eggs, long after her sisters had begun to produce.  Then one day, suddenly, there was a thing that looked kind of like a pupae, but about 3 times larger than the ones produced by the other queens.  My wife suggested maybe she had produced a drone, and that made sense, as apparently unfertilized queens sometimes do this.  But then I remembered having seen that video a long time ago, so I looked it up again today, and sure enough, that is what the thing growing with my queen looks like, and her gaster does seem a bit shriveled.  Poor girl, she is busy tending to it like it's one of her babies.  I have only been observing my ants under red light, and under that light the parasite looks the same color as the pupae, but not that I have taken the test tube out into the light, it looks much more orange than normal ant pupae.  Can't wait to see the fly emerge.

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