Leptopilina boulardi (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) female

A couple weeks ago the science media was positively tipsy with news that common fruit flies fight parasites by… wait for it… ingesting enough ethanol to kill their inner tormentors. Fruit flies boast a higher tolerance for ethanol than most other insects, including the wasps whose larvae grow by consuming young fruit flies from the inside. Flies can drink their attackers under the table, so to speak.

This sort of study is the science commentariat’s perfect story: solid research on an animal familiar to most readers, easily anthropomorphized, and headlineable with any number of drinking puns. Most coverage centered on the flies, but I was curious about the parasites, figitid wasps of the species Leptopilina boulardi. I was especially interested after discovering how rarely the parasites had been photographed. So I contacted one of the study’s author, Todd Schlenke, who kindly hooked me up with some of his charismatic study subjects. Below are a few photos I took of Todd’s wasps this weekend.

A female wasp- less than two millimeters long- probes a rotting banana with her ovipositor.

Mmmm.... rotting bananas!

Male Leptopilina have long antennae for sniffing out mates. This one spreads his wings a millisecond before launching himself into the air.

Fruit flies are attacked by several wasps, not just the lovely Leptopilina. Here’s a diapriid, Trichopria drosophilae, that attacks fly pupae rather than larvae:

Trichopria drosophilae. Those are some serious antennae!

And a braconid, Asobara citri:

Asobara citri

I hope you enjoy seeing these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

source: Milan NF, Kacsoh BZ, Schlenke TA. Alcohol Consumption as Self-Medication against Blood-Borne Parasites in the Fruit Fly. Current Biology Feb 16, 2012.