Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare (2021)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterflies-parasitic-wasps-finland

by nxobject • 2 years ago

171 98 2 years ago

atlasobscura.com

nxobject• 2 years ago

Posted prior in 2021, but thought it deserved a little more attention due to HN’s recent biology kick.

082349872349872• 2 years ago

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_(poem)

(yes, the De Morgan)

justinator• 2 years ago

A wasp in a wasp in a butterfly?

Yes, but how does it taste?

dynisor• 2 years ago

Maybe like figs[1]

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-o...

nvch• 2 years ago

Like butterflies in the stomach?

layer8• 2 years ago

Luckily we don’t have taste buds in the stomach.

hsjsbeebue2• 2 years ago

Well “it” becomes you and “taste buds” are the microwasps.

Perenti• 2 years ago

  Butterfly, Butterfly
  Your name should be Flutterby.
  Lest others discover,
  You don't contain butter,
  In fact you taste like shit.

acquacow• 2 years ago

Living inside some of these small wasps was another even tinier, rarer parasite, a “hyperparasitoid” wasp known as Mesochorus cf. stigmaticus. It kills the parasitic wasp around the same time as the wasp kills the caterpillar, and emerges 10 days later from the caterpillar’s carcass.

That's so metal...

prmoustache• 2 years ago

I would be that parastitic wasp, I would be afraid and even tinier one is ready to kill me right after I also kill the bigger one. How do you know which one is the last!

HansHamster• 2 years ago

It's t̶u̶r̶t̶l̶e̶s̶ wasps all the way down!

heyalexej• 2 years ago

- How matryoshka do you want to parasite?

- Yes!

binary132• 2 years ago

Maximum call stack depth exceeded.

keepamovin4• 2 years ago

A reminder to humans who want to undertake ecosystem engineering projects: we don't know what we're doing.

salesynerd• 2 years ago

Very true. I guess the challenge is to balance, if it's at all possible, the needs of humans and/or other species with that of the overall ecosystem. For example, in India there is a massive program underway to connect the various rivers across the country to alleviate drinking water shortages and increase the use of inland waterways for transportation. However, the net ecological impact of the program is not known. I doubt it is possible to really calculate, in advance, the impact of such programs.

keepamovin4• 2 years ago

Exactly! Caution is required because the ecosystem is not modelable from our current understanding :)

titzer• 2 years ago

Indeed. Our intentional ecosystem engineering is probably dwarfed by our unintentional transportation of invasive species and infectious diseases, going back centuries. And about zero of that seems to have led to a net increase in biodiversity--in short, we're stumbling about spreading destruction whereever we go.

hn_throwaway_998• 2 years ago

We don't, and I don't bring up the following to excuse humanity for our destruction of other species, but it's still just an interesting philosophical point to consider. We're as much a part of the circle of life and evolution as all the organisms that came before us. I mean, you think we're bad for other species, just think about cyanobacteria, which in their thirst for energy polluted the atmosphere with an extremely toxic gas that caused one of Earth's major extinction events.

Of course, that gas was molecular oxygen, and eventually other organisms evolved aerobic respiration, and that toxic gas is now required by many of Earth's organisms to survive. Now, that change took a billion years or so, as opposed to humans doubling CO2 concentrations in a couple hundred years, but it's still interesting to think about the crazy history of life on Earth.

wolverine8764• 2 years ago

That we are part of some circle of whatever does not make the consequences of our actions, and therefore our actions, any better. The cyanobacteria were bad; we have more of a choice.

Also, if we release gasses that kill and impoverish large portions of us, it won't help that it's 'natural'; it will make no difference at all.

Rapzid2• 2 years ago

We aren't the only species to cause the extinction of other species.

We are the only species that cares.

techas• 2 years ago

I completely agree with you. We can mess it up, but at geological time scale, life will regenerate. Evolution is very robust. Although, we live at human timescale. It will be a pity for our sons and daughters…

akira25013• 2 years ago

We know perfectly well what we are doing. We are just in a system that tends to be dominated by emergent behavior. So.. we just can't predict the outcomes with any level of accuracy.

Intralexical• 2 years ago

"Emergent behavior" is just a fancy term for "too complicated for us to understand". Things you consider obvious would be considered "emergent" to somebody a bit dumber than you, and things you consider "emergent" would be considered obvious to somebody a bit smarter than you.

leansensei• 2 years ago

"We know perfectly well what we are doing"...? Whether meant literally or sarcastically, this is hubristic. We have imperfect knowledge of a complex system. We cannot know perfectly well what we are doing, even if "what we are doing" is a few serving their own interests.

keepamovin4• 2 years ago

Haha. I can read your comment as a joke, and if spoken in conversation in response, I think it would go down well :)

But since I have a minute, it’s also fun, perhaps, to play around with the idea that you thought "we don't know what we're doing" wasn’t - but it is! - another way of stating the same thing that you say: that we don't understand the consequences of our actions.

It’s interesting, because your rephrasing highlights the nuances of language, and the difference between literal and idiomatic, or perhaps more metaphorical interpretations. And even the differences between languages.

It's likely to be very different in other languages, such as German, or Japanese, perhaps.

But in English, the phrase, “you don't know what you're doing”, is most commonly used to mean: you do not understand the consequences of your actions; These will produce unintended effects, that will likely be different to your intended effects.

In other words, the phrase I used, in English, almost always includes the situation that you describe, rather than the seemingly more literal interpretation of “You are not aware of, nor comprehend the very actions themselves, which you take or plan to take, regarding this thing”.

It is fascinating to flip it around and see that idiomatic phrase through that more literal interpretation, that I’m assuming you made, whether for comic phrasing or not, mind!

And curious to wonder how we came to have one meaning pointed to by the sign for the other.

Although, due to the nuances of language, I can’t even be sure that it is to this more literal interpretation that you in fact are actually referring! It could be an even further far afield interpretation that has eluded me, and all the other commenters here thus far.

The endless Fascinations of language! that’s probably why we rely on idiom. But no disparagement to you for, whether knowingly or not, trying something a little different. Haha! :)

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

Nature doesn't know what she is doing either. It's a system that evolved based on random events that were beneficial for some species and bad for others.

keepamovin4• 2 years ago

That's an interesting perspective. Worthy of more thought that can be reasonably alotted in reply to an internet comment. Thank you for your contribution! :)

foobarian• 2 years ago

100 million years later and they are mitochondria inside a cell inside a large animal...

chasil• 2 years ago

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet, 1.5. 165–66).

gepoch• 2 years ago

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

hsjsbeebue2• 2 years ago

Like the recursive game of life?

ceroxylon• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_(poem)

disqard• 2 years ago

Well-played!

staplung• 2 years ago

  The Vermin only teaze and pinch
  Their Foes superior by an Inch.
  So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
  Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
  And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,
  And so proceed ad infinitum:
  Thus ev'ry [Poster], in his Kind
  Is bit by him that comes behind.

;)

mock-possum• 2 years ago

I like the way this one flows better.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

Parasitic wasps are horrible nightmare creatures. I don’t know what to think about parasitic wasps that prey on other parasitic wasps. I think in this case the enemy of my enemy is still disgusting.

jader201• 2 years ago

No kidding.

Too bad it wasn’t parasitic butterflies (larva) from the parasitic wasps. That would’ve been epic.

blarg1• 2 years ago

I saw a youtube video the other day about how a wasp sting infects the caterpillar with a virus to modify its behaviour and stop it from turning into a butterfly.

xipho• 2 years ago

Seeing a large palm caterpillar seemingly OK at one moment, turning your head, and looking back to see it completely deflated as if a baloon, black goo oozing out, with upwards of 40 larvae anchored to it and spinning their heads around as they create cocoons is seriously eye opening.

Perhaps the most hyper-diverse group of animals in the world are the chalcid or jewel wasps. They don't sting, they lay their eggs in others, including others eggs (some eggs of things so small they were only recently proven to be the hosts), as parasitoids (things that kill their hosts). They are everywhere, it's trivial to catch them on any front lawn with the right techniques, yet the vast majority of people would never know they are there. The broader lineage include some species smaller than the largest amoebas.

If you want to see ecology in a nutshell look at fig wasps, absolutely insane, soldier-like males, blind, wingless, ant-like males of other species, variable length ovipositors that let them exploit all different micro-micro areas of a fig. Multiple inter-dependent species on one species of Fig? Sure, why not. It goes on ad-nauseam.

https://chalcid.org/ for a classic picture in our field.

hn_throwaway_998• 2 years ago

Wow, I didn't know about the fig wasps before. Beyond crazy cool! That level of coevolution is just so neat to me.

_0ffh• 2 years ago

Read that one first in one of Dawkins' books, maybe Unweaving the Rainbow.

animal_spirits• 2 years ago

There's a free documentary on Youtube called "The Queen of Trees" which goes over the lifecycle of an African Sycamore Fig Tree and follows the crazy amount of life that it supports over a year, including the lifecycle of the sycamore fig wasp. It's unbelievable, and deserves a watch by all who are interested in ecology.

https://youtu.be/xy86ak2fQJM?si=CVL23tMUSEa28aBr

xattt• 2 years ago

The fig symbiosism with wasps goes even further than that, since nematodes are also involved, and that they too are bespoke for their fig hosts. AFAIK, the nematodes help mediate wasp reproduction.

edelans• 2 years ago

This is mindblowing. I found this YT video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovo_T0KqdYg showing the whole life cycle of the jewel wasp.

What impresses me the most is that the wasps are not trained to do that. They appear to "just know" what to do. Wow.

hn_throwaway_998• 2 years ago

On my worst days I like to think "Well, at least I'm not a cockroach being eaten alive from the inside out, with my vital organs specifically spared long enough so I can survive as food for the thing eating me, by a parasitic wasp."

And, quite seriously, the existence of this type of horrific parasitism precludes the existence of any sort of benevolent god in my mind. It's easy to imagine a million different universes where this sort of abysmal torture doesn't exist, and it only makes sense in the view of "uncaring" evolution.

api• 2 years ago

Trivia: the xenomorph from Alien was inspired by parasitic wasps, because that’s exactly what they do to spiders or sometimes larger insects.

westmeal• 2 years ago

Big Fig Wasps!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql5_q_33wqY

Modified3019• 2 years ago

But the tiny parasitic wasp H. horticola appears to have been able to fly or at least to be lifted by strong winds to move between islands on the Åland archipelago

When I did agronomy work in Kansas, there were some pests like aphids (and fungal diseases) that are normally unable to overwinter.

Somehow they get blown up high into the air and moved around by jet streams to be dropped hundreds of miles north, where they can become an economic pest but not technically able to complete their life cycle into the next year.

This especially works well with aphids, as part of their lifecycle is making clones of themselves, so just one is needed to cause a local infestation. Often these carry viruses, and the initial effect is random spots of disease showing up in the middle of a field. For pests that migrate under wing power, they tend to initially establish on field edges first and slowly move in.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01681...

nivertech• 2 years ago

A simple explanation is that these wasps and microwasps were originally the same species, but due to variation (e.g. size or digestion), the larger ones evolved to bite their host, while the smaller ones for some reasons could not feed on the host, so they left with the only option to cannibalize on their former relatives.

Now we speed up the simulation, and after millions of time steps they will become agents of a different species.

BTW: are there any foundational ABM[1] models that explain how free-living species become symbiotic, parasitic, or ectoparasitic?

---

[1] Agent-based Modeling

TheGrkIntrprtr• 2 years ago

“Charles Darwin found the example of the Ichneumonidae so troubling that it contributed to his increasing doubts about the nature and existence of a Creator”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonidae

Liquix• 2 years ago

“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.” - Darwin

bspammer• 2 years ago

The full letter that this is quoted from is available here, it's wonderful writing (3rd and 4th paragraph): https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2814.xml

I have to admit I've never read any Darwin before, but in those 2 paragraphs he completely summarizes my feelings about the natural world.

mrguyorama• 2 years ago

I've never understood this argument. Abrahamic god is pretty clearly okay with suffering and torture and murder. He was pretty clear to certain tribes of jews that they should murder certain other tribes of jews, and if you are islamic, he is very clear you should kill nonbelievers, to the point of full scale war. God also gave mankind "dominion" over animals, up to and including murdering them for food, so killing something for food has significant "Okay" precedent.

God does not limit suffering people or animals experience. He has the utmost ability to do exactly that if he wanted, but seemingly he has taken a hands off approach, at least since about the 1600s. I guess he's not that bothered by immense suffering.

And why should he be? He made us in his image, whatever that's supposed to mean, but we also are not meant to understand his ways. Why would such a supernatural being care about the suffering of some toy creatures he made? Do you feel bad when you play action figures and one of them drowns?

gattr• 2 years ago

I remember reading somewhere that the Tierra ecosystem/evolutionary simulation ([1]) readily produced such higher-order parasites of parasites.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_(computer_simulation)

flir2• 2 years ago

Interesting. From what I remember, the parasites that evolved in Tierra resembled viruses. Tierra had a downward-pressure on organism size (the bigger you are, the longer it takes to make a copy of yourself), so organisms evolved that jettisoned their own replication mechanism and relied on pirating the mechanism of another. I wonder what the advantage of being a parasite of a parasite is in that environment.

Sharlin• 2 years ago

The hyperparasites in Tierra are strictly speaking not parasites of parasites, rather they’re host "species" that evolved a resistance against some parasite types and, critically, a trick that causes the parasite to actually make a copy of its host when it tries to copy itself using the host’s replication code. So essentially the hyperparasite steals the parasite’s CPU time and still has its own timeslice left to replicate itself.

The whole thing relies on the fact that the Tierra "organisms" live in a flat memory space where you can jump anywhere, including into the middle of other individuals, and just merrily keep executing code from that point. I wonder if something like that was possible in the (hypothetical) RNA world, before cell membranes developed, but I don’t think cell-based life can have a precise equivalent of Tierra hyperparasites. The closest analogue is probably mutualistic relationships that have evolved from parasitic ones.

ixxie• 2 years ago

More interesting than the wasps: the group working with butterflies on these islands have been working Metacommunity ecology:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacommunity

pfdietz• 2 years ago

I'm going to turn this around and suggest introducing a species without its parasites is not a good idea. That's how you get invasive species that spread out of control. Then you have to go find those parasites and pathogens and deliberately introduce them.

johan_larson• 2 years ago

Yo dawg, I heard you like parasites, so I put wasps in your wasps so they can parasitize while they're parasitized.

angst_ridden• 2 years ago

“So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ’em; And so proceed ad infinitum.” — Swift

yawnxyz• 2 years ago

Wolbachia pipientis increases the susceptibility of the parasitic wasp to being taken over by the tiny parasitic wasp M. stigmaticus, which can only live on the H. horticola wasp

Wolbachia / host interactions is wild. Phages in Wolbachia are selecting for which of their hosts get to be parents or not: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adk9469

Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare (2021)

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