After 7-10 days of incubating your Leafcutter bees in our new kit, you might encounter parasitic wasps known as Pteromalus wasps. If you spot them, you can simply squish them with your fingers. These female wasps can lay up to 50 eggs in each Leafcutter bee cocoon!
Pteromalidae is a large family of wasps, mainly acting as parasitoids to other insects. They are found worldwide in nearly all habitats and are often crucial as biological control agents. The oldest known fossils date back to the Early Cretaceous period.
Before 2022, the subfamily-level classification of Pteromalidae was highly debated and considered unstable. The family was thought to be polyphyletic, meaning it included various unrelated groups. Essentially, a "pteromalid" was any Chalcidoidea member with five-segmented tarsi that didn't fit into other families with the same trait.
In 2022, the Pteromalidae family was reclassified into 24 separate families.
27 май 2024
