Pepsis grossa
| Pepsis grossa | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pepsis grossa |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Pepsis grossa | ||||||||||||
| ( Fabricius , 1798) |
Pepsi's grossa ( Syn. : Pepsi formosa ), partly in English as Tarantulafalke called, is a wasp from the family of wasps (Pompilidae) that tarantulas hunt. The species is the official state insect of New Mexico . The sting of this wasp species israted 4.0on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index .
features
The wasps reach a body length of 24 to 40 millimeters (males) or 20 to 51 millimeters (females). Your body is colored black on the legs and has a predominantly bluish green sheen. Often the body is also tinged purple or copper. The twelve-segment antennae are black, the tip of the last segment is usually orange. The wings are usually black in color and have a strong blue-purple sheen. Depending on the distribution area, the wings are also colored amber or orange, often with a dark edge. The base of the wing is then always more or less in shades of red, the wing tip, especially in the males, is brightly colored. Individuals with brightly colored wings occur particularly in the United States, northern Mexico and the Caribbean, in southern California, in Baja California and the eastern part of northern Mexico, and further south, individuals with black colored wings occur. An exception is a population in northwestern Peru, whose wing pairs are basally orange-reddish in color. The forewings show a dark area towards the middle and finally have an orange-reddish color again towards the pale colored tip. The hind wings are otherwise pale amber, their wing tips are pale and sometimes with a narrow, pale orange-reddish band.
Occurrence
The species is primarily native to Central America and occurs from the southern United States and the Caribbean to northern and central Peru and Guyana and French Guiana . In Mexico you can find them up to heights of about 2000 meters.
Way of life
The adults feed on nectar and fruits. The larvae develop parasitoidly on tarantulas . The female paralyzes a spider with her sting and pulls it backwards either into its living cave or into a new cave dug by the female herself. It lays a single egg on the host's abdomen and closes the entrance hole after the egg is laid. The wasp larva feeds on the spider in the following time, pupation takes place in the cave.
Trivia
Film material about the fight between Pepsis grossa and a tarantula can be seen in the Disney production The Desert Lives (1953) and in the Wolper production The Pairings of Animals (1974).
supporting documents
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Christine Kewitz: Dr. Schmidt's Pain Index lists the most painful of all insect bites. In: Vice. July 7, 2015, accessed February 23, 2020 .
- ↑ Robert Hixson Julyan, Mary Stuever: Field Guide to the Sandia Mountains . University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 2005, ISBN 0-8263-3667-1 , pp. 134 .
- ↑ a b C.R. Vardy: The New World tarantula-hawk wasp genus Pepsis Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae). Part 2. The P. grossato P. deaurata groups . Zool. Verh. 337, 2002, ISBN 90-73239-82-6 , p. 58 ff .
- ↑ Fred Punzo, Brian Garman: Effects of Encounter Experience on the hunting behavior of the spider wasp, Pepsi formosa (Say) (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae) . In: The Southwestern Naturalist 34 (4) . December 1989, ISSN 0038-4909 , p. 513-518 .
literature
- Bernhard Grzimek : Grzimeks animal life, insects, Volume II. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-423-05970-2 .
- Noel Tait: Insects and Spiders. Oetinger, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-7891-8412-3 .
