Mick || 15.03.99
|| NZ || I'm an entomologist and ecologist working on my MsC looking at pest management and insect behavior! Feel free to ask me any questions about biology and stuff. Can't always guarantee I'll know much but I will try for u💗🐜
Some species of Encyrtid wasps exhibit a remarkable developmental phenomenon called polyembryony, in which a single egg multiplies clonally in the host and produces large numbers of identical adult wasps. Even more remarkably, some of the larvae are larger than the others and act in a similar way to the soldiers of eusocial insects, attacking any other wasp larvae already in the body of the host, and dying without reproducing (see: biological altruism).
Found in the southern half of Australia and in New Zealand. 1-5 are females (which are flightless), 6-9 are males, and 10 is a caterpillar in its case made from silk and environmental debris.
Photos 1-3 by bernie-l, 4 by naturewatchwidow, 5 by reiner, 6 by chrismoody, 7-8 by reiner, 9 by triplett, and 10 by johneichler
The Sundarbans is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world which covers parts of India and Bangladesh by NASA // Saltstraumen Maelstrom, Norway
Hey bogleech, if nematodes are so incredibly abundant and such, why are all but the parasitic species so small? Seems like your expect at least one species of free-living nematode to be like, visible? Surely if flatworms can do it, nematodes can?
Being big is basically one of the harder things to evolve for, so if something is successful at a tiny size, it's going to usually stick to that trend! Most arachnids are mites you can barely see and most insects are smaller than grains of rice. Most mammals and reptiles are tiny compared to their prehistory too of course, but it is interesting that there aren't even like "earthworm" sized free-living nematodes I can think of.
Maybe it has to do with their body structure. Unlike softer worm-shaped animals, the surface of a nematode is actually an exoskeleton, a single tubular one that's flexible like plastic. Maybe that just isn't efficient for living in soil or water at any larger size, or takes more energy to build, so they can only get really massive when they have the continuous nutrient exposure of a parasitic lifestyle??
I do wish they were huge though because they just look so radical.