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Hatchling wasps

Published on Project Noah
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-20.6847, -41.9321

Field Notes

Description:

I'm pretty sure this cocoon was made with silk and fine shavings extracted from the surface of the giant bamboo trunk. There are several of these cocoons in almost every bamboo trunk, and where it was made there is always a small, lightly scraped area around it.

Habitat:

Rural area of southeastern Brazil.

Notes:

EDIT:
After a few days, I captured the little nest and waited until it hatched. Behold, it worked! 5 new little wasps in the world! New photos added (photos 2 to 6). ~2mm in length.

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (28)
AntónioGinjaGinja
Fantastic spotting Leonardo,congrats on the well deserved SOTW and thanks for sharing
Leonardo Castro
Tukup, ornithoptera, Leuba, Mark... Thank you all for the compliments!
Mark Ridgway
Well deserved congrats... even if we don't have a name for it. ;-)
Leuba Ridgway
Congratulations Leonardo - good work & well deserved acknowledgement !
Tukup
Congratulations Leonardo on the well-deserved SOTW. Great job of following up on the spotting and including all of us in the process. Thanks for sharing. Well done.
Leonardo Castro
Thank you, Maria, and thank you Michael! I am very pleased to have been able to contribute and happy that my efforts have benefited everyone in some way. Soon we will have more of these strange and miraculous findings. A matter of time! ;)
MichaelS
Congrats, Leonardo Castro, your series of hatchling wasp photographs has been voted Spotting of the Week by the Rangers team. Wonderful work capturing these photographs, offering specific field notes and working with Rangers on a species identification! https://www.facebook.com/projectnoah/photos/a.10150595289465603/10162362429575603/?type=3&theater https://twitter.com/projectnoah/status/1175075927535095808
Maria dB
Such an interesting spotting; something many of us will not see in nature!
AshleyT
Your spotting has been nominated for the Spotting of the Week. The winner will be chosen by the Project Noah Rangers based on a combination of factors including: uniqueness of the shot, status of the organism (for example, rare or endangered), quality of the information provided in the habitat and description sections. There is a subjective element, of course; the spotting with the highest number of Ranger votes is chosen. Congratulations on being nominated!
Leonardo Castro
Thank you Mark, Leuba! Well... Mark, thanks for the suggestion but I don't know... I think there is an important detail here. These wasps are yellow in the image because they are newborns (less than 1 hour born). I suppose they will get darker over time and, who knows, after longer black as their supposed father (or mother!) in the first picture. Maybe they look more like this one https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1706936006 I should have preserved them for another 1 or 2 days to clear this doubt, but it's OK! :)
Leuba Ridgway
Well done and how exciting ! Must have been really satisfying to see something come out of the nest and to actually see little wasps....thanks for following-up and letting us know. Mark might be right with the Torymid wasp. Yes, your little black friend might have something to do with it.
Mark Ridgway
http://www.waspweb.org/Chalcidoidea/Torymidae/Megastigminae/Megastigmus/Megastigmus_transvaalensis.htm https://scielo.conicyt.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-34292014000400016
Mark Ridgway
Looks like a Torymidae.. similar to Megastigmus sp. ..if only we had John la Salle with us still.
Mark Ridgway
Wow!! Well done. Now I can see it is not really silk. And those little wasps are quite beautiful. Great set of photos too. Thanks for sharing this.
Leonardo Castro
As I promised, it's there! New photos added (photos 2 to 6). To my surprise, the hatching happened inside the jar I used for collection as soon as I put the nest inside it. The nature is amazing! Hope this helps in identification.
Leonardo Castro
Oops! I was forgetting to say that our little black friend there in the picture has to do with our dilemma!
Leonardo Castro
Mark, Leuba, I think I just got the long-awaited answer to this puzzle! I am trying to make the photos. As soon as I can I post here! ;)
Leonardo Castro
Many thanks for the effort and the tip, Leuba! Yes, very interesting! Tomorrow I'll be back at the place where I found this spotting and check more closely. If I can, I will bring one with me to my house and monitor it for a few days, since, at least apparently the eggs have not yet hatched. Super interesting informations yours. I'm betting it's a wasp!
Leuba Ridgway
I've been looking at this spotting for ages as it is fascinating. My knowledge of wasps is very limited but the little insect looks like a wasp -a little more like a wasp that is a parasitoid than a builder of the nest. http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=3949 talks about the scraping of the bamboo surface just as you've described. It's all very interesting and hope someone can enlighten us.
Leonardo Castro
Hi Mark! About 20mm in length. The bee is ~2mm. Yes, I already considered the spider hypothesis. Nor do I see a wasp handling silk like that, although I have already caught some of them collecting wood shavings, as it seems to have been done in this case. It's a mystery. I think of collecting one (there are a lot of them there) and monitoring it to see what happens.
Mark Ridgway
Looks silky. Attachment doesn't look fungal to me. Could it be spider eggs? In Australia we have a few which make suspended egg clusters. I think wasps use silk individually at pupation but I don't know about for multiple egg clusters? Size would be good to know - I guess the nearby 'bee' helps but if it were really tiny It could resemble a mature slime mold. ;-) Definitely interesting.
Photographed
PublishedAugust 15, 2019

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