murex13 的最愛

Tiny wasp collected with bee bowls. These are "quick and dirty" photos of the specimen; let me know if you need shots of additional morphology for ID.

Body length: 2.4 mm

Fire Recovery Bioblitz GRSM-02083 #0765
Bee bowls

Collected as part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (dlia.org)

Weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina)tending Treehopper( Membracidae) is a very common behavior.
These ants protect treehoppers, Hoppers feed on plant sap. In exchange for protection these treehoppers produce honeydew ( sugary fluid ). Ants love to feed on this honeydew.
{ Myrmecophily("ant-love") is the term applied to positive inter species associations between ants and a variety of other organisms such as plants, other arthropods, and fungi. Myrmecophily refers to mutualistic associations with ants, though in its more general use the term may also refer to commensal or even parasitic interactions.(wiki)

I was on regular process of documenting mysteries of nature. I was fortunate to photograph tree hopper producing honeydew.
I just zoomed my photo to see the clarity of pic. For my surprise there were six tiny wasps, which was almost invisible through my eyes. I started observing further. These wasps ( Aphelinidae) were parasitic . They are probably egg parasitoids of these tree hoppers. But these wasps were cleaver, as soon as hopper produce honeydew, by the time ant approaches these were having their share & only little of dew was remaining for ant.
These wasps were taking adavantage of ants tending treehopper!
In a lighter note, these wasps were parasitic both for hoppers & ants!
check comments for further pic
May 2020
Indraprastha
Mysuru
Thanks Sankararaman H for identifying these tiny wasp