While sorting through specimens, I found one that looked a bit odd. Take a look at it below. See anything different about it?
![](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7413/26831523204_20bd3f3d25.jpg)
This male Conostigmus specimen is missing an eye and also has a malformed antenna. These defects probably occurred during development.
![](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7270/26831524334_ca71a025d2.jpg)
It turns out that Paul Dessart, the taxonomist who did most of the modern work on Ceraphronoidea, also found these sorts of physical defects in specimens. He even published a paper on the subject in 1993: “Un Conostigmus et un Ceraphron a antennes teratologiques (Hymenoptera: Ceraphronoidea)”.
Teratology is the study of the abnormalities that occur during physiological development. In his paper, Dessart describes some of the physical anomalies he found in specimens and provides detailed drawings of them. Along with malformed antennomeres, Dessart found a Dendrocerus carpenteri cyclops, with one fused eye taking up most of the front of the head. It’s a different sort of cyclops than the one I found, but it’s interesting to know that similar cases have been observed before.
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