should be viro 1, instead its crawly trivia (1)

_{still deciding on if i should keep the default blog look or make it match my layout...}

super fumbled on studying today. gotta make an entry to remind myself to do so tomorrowwwwww, but for now whatever. wasp appreciation entry.

alomya debellator (debellator to mean "conqueror, to subdue") is one of my favorite ichneumonids - the very kind of wasp that not only most popularly made charles darwin doubt the existence of a benevolent god, but also led j. h. fabre to extensively observe (and quite frankly, anthropomorphize) imperfectly paralyzed prey and attempt to keep them alive or at the very least as comfortable as they can be in their final moments. it also led to william kirby anthropomorphizing them in a different angle, claiming that "you can scarcely deny to them love for a progeny they are never destined to behold." in reference to their nature as parasitoids. while i'm not a big fan of kirby's specific moralization of nature, i do enjoy this quote, which instead takes the angle of just how amazing these instincts are.

"if, for example, an animal [...] should be found to feed upon the inside of a dog, devouring only those parts not essential to life, while it cautiously left uninjured the heart, arteries, lungs, and intestines, — should we not regard such an instance as a perfect prodigy, as an example of instinctive forbearance almost miraculous?"

back to the specifics, though! there's nothing really "special" about a. debellator in comparison to other ichneumonids. its not alone in its genus, but the others aren't as well documented unfortunately. campopleginae are sometimes mistaken for them. females lay their eggs in moth caterpillars, which for us, helps to kill off huge invasions that damage crop yields; particularly with the silver y. most recorded human observation (38.7%) is in norway, sweden, and france, taking place around june and may. there's actually a surprising amount of documented sequences for these fellas, to end off, i personally enjoy this 2006 ribosomal rna gene partial sequence.

- zf ☆