As part of the Ceraphronoidea ARTS project, we have to comb through a lot of samples of small wasps and sort them by family and/or genus. This activity is always something that I look forward to because I love wasps and their diverse morphology, or in other words, the diversity of their form and structure.
In our last sorting session, I found an amazing wasp from the family Platygastridae, and possibly the genus Inostemma (so, not a ceraphronoid, but still cool!). Check out the structure rising up from the abdomen and curving up behind the head.
If you’ve read some of my previous blogs, you might be able to guess why I find this structure so interesting. This projection serves to accommodate the long ovipositor of this wasp. How crazy is that?!
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