White butterfly parasite wasp
The white butterfly parasite wasp is a tiny black wasp with two pairs of wings. It has a sneaky way of growing up. Its babies live inside the caterpillars of white butterflies, the ones that munch on cabbages.
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Fun facts
A mother wasp puts between 16 and 52 eggs into one single caterpillar.
After about two to three weeks the larvae crawl out and spin a cluster of little yellow cocoons, like a pile of tiny eggs.
From egg to grown-up wasp takes only about three to four weeks.
The boys come out of their cocoons first and fly away.
Even this little wasp has enemies: even tinier wasps lay their eggs in its cocoons.
Most asked questions about White butterfly parasite wasp
?What are the yellow cocoons next to a caterpillar?
They are often the cocoons of this little wasp. Its larvae grew inside the caterpillar and then came out to spin them.
?How big is the white butterfly parasite wasp?
It is only 3 to 7 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cotesia glomerata
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Braconidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Braconidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Australia and Oceania, North America, South America
- Also known as
- White butterfly parasite
Where the facts come from
- Cotesia glomerata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Lennart Tange on Flickr. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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