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Mystery solved
Posted by on March 11, 2010
Here’s the image from Wednesday’s mystery in its entirety:
Mystery revealed
I think it’s safe to say that Ted nailed this one squarely on the head (but then, he’s probably seen a gazillion similar scenarios over the years, am I right?).
The frass-packed gallery of this wood-boring beetle larva comes to an abrupt end at what amounts to a murder scene. The head of the victim peeks out at the end of clutch of parasitoid pupae. Parasitoids (like this wasp, for example) differ from parasites (like fleas or ticks) in that they kill their host rather than simply harm it. Here, the hapless beetle larva was consumed from the inside out by a dozen or so tiny wasp larvae, which then constructed silken cocoons in which to pupate.
Yay – how many points did I score?
p.s. is that wood-side or bark-side? Doesn’t look like pine to me in this larger view – clues on the host plant might help ID the beetle.
It’s the bark-side, and it’s the same tree on which I found the Cerambycid larvae (the one I think is elm). I’m going to go back tomorrow probably and see if I can get a better ID on the tree (I can’t tell from the photos I took) and maybe collect some larvae.
You know, I thought the head capsule looked a lot like this Synchroid (I think) I found the other day…but they don’t tunnel, do they?
I think the physical constraints of their environment causes a lot of under-bark beetle larvae to look similar. Lamiines have an elongate flattened head such as the one in the photo, but it the live larva much of it is retracted within the pronotal segment with just the front part of the head protruding.
p.s. Synchroids do tunnel through wood, but unually more rotten stuff and without such well-defined galleries as in this photo.
Could be elm based on appearance, and elm borers do tunnel the underside of the bark – we’ll see how this plays out.
5 for story, 5 for characters and 2.5 for location (I’ll accept “larval gallery”). 2 bonus points for being a smarty-pants. 😛
Cool – 14.5 points in the bank.
Should I have said “Ontario” for location? 🙂
(and does that get me 2 more points for being a smart-a**?)
-2 actually.