Abstract
Mutillid wasps are ectoparasitic insects that parasitize the enclosed developmental stages of their hosts. Adults are sexually dimorphic, with brilliantly colored and hardened cuticles. The biology of parasitic mutillid wasps has rarely been addressed. Here, we investigated the parasitization by Mutilla europaea on an important pollinator, Bombus breviceps. The parasitic biology and dispersal ability of M. europaea were observed and tested under experimental conditions. We provide the first record of M. europaea parasitizing B. breviceps in southwestern China. As is the case with other bumblebee species, M. europaea mainly parasitized the puparia of males. The dispersal and invasion ability of this parasite under experimental conditions indicates that it spreads rapidly, as far as 20 m in one week, and invades different hosts (B. breviceps and Bombus haemorrhoidalis). This report not only clarifies the parasitic relationship between M. europaea and B. breviceps, but also has important ecological implications for the conservation of bumblebees in China.
Highlights
Most velvet ants, Mutilla europaea (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae), are solitary parasitoid wasps characterized by strong sexual dimorphism, with females being apterous and males being winged.Mutilla is a genus of the Mutillidae family [1]
Bumblebee species other than B. breviceps have been recorded in this area before [18]
Five of six collected B. breviceps nests were located in bushes (Figure 1A,C) that were surrounded by a thick, dense layer of grass and were located approximately 5 cm above the root collar of the bush
Summary
Mutilla europaea (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae), are solitary parasitoid wasps characterized by strong sexual dimorphism, with females being apterous and males being winged. Mutilla is a genus of the Mutillidae family [1]. When they are not actively feeding and enclosed in some protective structure (e.g., cell, cocoon, puparium, ootheca), Mutilla species are larval ectoparasitoids of the developmental stages of other insects, mostly other aculeate Hymenoptera [2,3]. The known hosts of velvet ants include a wide variety of wasps and bees in the order Hymenoptera [2,3,4] and some species of Diptera [5,6], Coleoptera [7], Lepidoptera [8], and Blattodea [9]. Despite its size (with more than 4300 described species), few studies have addressed the biology of the family Mutillidae [10,11].
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