Parasitic Wasp
cwilcox | June 18, 2009There is an entire family of wasps who use other species to raise their young, and they're a seemingly endless source of sci-fi worthy parasites. I've covered a few of them before, but none is quite so elegant as Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga, a Costa Rican wasp with a fascinating and unique way of keeping its young safe until they can cocoon and turn into adults: it preys on spiders.
Spiders wouldn't seem like the best choice for nanny, what with their taste for bugs and all. But the daring Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga uses them anyhow. Unlike many parasitic wasps which lay hundreds or thousands…
cwilcox | May 4, 2009In The Womb: Extreme Animals
Premiering Sunday, May 10th at 9 PM on National Geographic Channel
I first heard about this weekend's amazing special, In the Womb: Extreme Animals way back in October of last year. It was my interest in the incredible images that come from In The Womb that made me stand out to National Geographic in the first place, allowing me to preview all the other awesome specials. So it's with great pleasure that I annouce that finally, after waiting since October, you can see In The Womb: Extreme Animals this weekend, on Sunday, May 10th at 9 PM! The first In The Womb was…
cwilcox | April 30, 2009Parasitic wasps are always an easy target as sci-fi parasites. After all, they were the main inspiration behind the film "Alien" - clearly they're 'sci-fi worthy'. They all do terrible, mean things to their hosts while they eat them alive from the inside out. And, simply, they're just really, really awesome parasites.
This week's wasp, however, is even more special: it's about to be featured in an upcoming National Geographic Channel event called In The Womb: Extreme Animals. Don't worry - I'll give you the down and dirty details on that soon (it premiers on May 10th, just for a head's up).…
cwilcox | February 21, 2009This isn't the first time I've mentioned Parasitic Wasps. They're a rude sort of parasite, laying their eggs inside unwitting hosts to grow up and eat them from the inside out. While it sounds gross and, frankly, a little evil, it makes them also really good at one thing: biocontrol.
When Sarah Palin made her off-putting remark about research on fruit flies, everyone assumed she meant the bio model Drosophila. But she was actually referring to research on the Olive Fruit Fly, Bactrocera oleae. The pest infiltrated Californian olive groves in the late 1990s, and has been wreaking havoc ever…