Ichneumon wasps are in the family Ichneumonidae, a group whose larvae are parasitic on a variety of other invertebrates. The 5,000 known species in North America could be joined by an additional 3,000, and the “estimated 60,000” worldwide might actually total 100,000.
Sand wasps are (as are most wasps and bees) solitary wasps, found in habitats with loose or sandy soil. While they are not social insects like honeybees, ants, and some hornets are, they will tolerate other wasps nesting nearby.
The Wasp family Ichneumonidae is a very large (and confusing and taxonomically challenging) bunch. How large? Bugguide reports 5,000 species in North America, with possibly another 3,000 not yet described, and estimates of a global species numbers range from 60,000 to 100,000. How confusing? The family is subdivided into 27 subfamilies.
“Bugs without Bios” are critters that, while undoubtedly worthy, are barely on the radar in either on-line or print references. But, they contribute to their communities and have their own places in the Web of Life. What these three have in common is their (admittedly very limited) work as biological control agents.
Velvet Ants, as every on-line and paper resource tells us up front, are not ants at all, but are flightless female wasps in the family Mutillidae (and like ants, they’re in the order Hymenoptera). Their sting is ranked at a 3 out of 4 on the Schmidt Pain Scale and is considered painful, but not dangerous/venomous. Velvet ants are found in dry habitats where their host species build their nest tunnels, and they have extra-tough exoskeletons that help to prevent internal water loss in their xeric surroundings.
Horntails (family Siricidae) are often called “wood wasps” because their eggs are laid in wood and their young spend both their larval and pupal stages there. Horntails practice “complete metamorphosis,” going through an egg stage, a larval (eating) stage and a pupal (resting/changing) stage before emerging as a very different-looking adult.
Two-banded Petrophilias are found near the rivers and streams in eastern North America that their larvae inhabit. The hind wings of adult Petrophila moths have a row of black/metallic spots that make one spider enthusiast theorize that they’re Jumping Spider mimics.
The Bald-faced Hornet is famous for the football-shaped paper nest that it suspends, between two and forty feet off the ground, from a man-made or natural support. The nest is initiated by the queen, a fertile female that mated last fall and holed up over the winter while the workers, drones, and old queen died. She starts the new nest in spring by fashioning a spherical structure that’s open at the bottom. After she raises her first brood, her daughters take over, enlarging and guarding the nest, foraging for food for the larvae and their queen.
American Pelecinid Wasps are relatively common from Argentina through Canada, in woodlands, grasslands and gardens, from mid-summer to early fall. Two other species occur exclusively south of the border. Pelecinids have short wings for their length and are slow flyers.
The BugLady spent some very warm days among the Cup plants, those jumbo prairie plants whose opposite leaves join around the stem resulting in a small reservoir that often holds rain water or dew. The undersurface of the tender top leaves of many Cup plants were wall-to-wall with (insert creepy adjective here) red aphids—a cast of thousands—and there were some very cool supporting actors.