Parasitic creatures — living in spider egg sacs — found as new species in India
Across the regions of West Bengal, India, a group of researchers were on the hunt for the egg sacs of spiders.
Between 2021 and 2023, they searched near farmland and natural environments alike until they found the groups of eggs.
'Spider egg sacs, along with guarding mother spiders, whenever encountered were collected from different localities in West Bengal,' researchers said in a study published June 23 in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Taxonomy.
The researchers weren't after the spiders — they wanted the parasites hidden within.
'Each spider egg sac was carefully placed in a labelled vial and covered by muslin cloth,' researchers said. 'These vials were kept at room temperature (75 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit) in the lab for one month to monitor the emergence of spiderlings and parasitoids.'
What emerged from the egg sacs were members of the Idris genus of parasitic wasps, according to the study.
The group is known as 'gregarious' parasites, meaning more than one parasite is depositing in each host, in this case the egg sacs.
When the wasps were reared from the eggs, they were revealed to belong to four new species, according to the study.
The first new species is Idris bianor, named after the spider genus it parasitizes, according to the study.
Its body length is just 0.02 to 0.03 inches long, researchers said, and its body is light brown, reddish brown and pale yellow with brownish black patches.
The species is found in West Bengal, India, as well as in Pakistan, according to the study.
Idris furvus, the second new species, was named after the Latin word for 'black,' and references its body color, according to the study.
The wasp is predominantly black, with 'honey brown' legs and antennae, researchers said.
The black Idris wasp is a bit larger than the bianor wasp, measuring 0.05 inches long, according to the study.
The species has only been found in West Bengal, researchers said.
The third new species is named Idris hyllus, again named after the host spider it parasitizes.
The head and body are 'honey brown to yellow,' with 'pale yellow' mandibles that are 'reddish-brown' on the tip, according to the study.
Only females of the species were discovered, researchers said.
The last species, Idris longiscapus, was named after the 'elongated scape characteristic of this species,' or the section of antennae closest to the wasp's head, according to the study.
Similar in size to the other species, the wasp is 'brownish black' with 'yellow' legs and antennae and white hairs on the body, researchers said.
The species is found in West Bengal and Pakistan, researchers said.
Parasitic wasps are a group of wasps that rely on other species to complete their life cycles, according to the University of Minnesota.
They are all generally very small and lay eggs either in the eggs of another species or in another species itself the university said.
Parasitic wasps don't build a hive or have a queen, and instead lead solitary lives that begin hidden. When the wasps emerge from a parasitized insect, the insect dies, according to the university.
All four species were found in West Bengal, a state on the far eastern border of India, just west of Bangladesh.
The research team includes V. Sushama, Rupam Debnath, K. Rajmohana and K.P. Dinesh.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Geographic
21 hours ago
- National Geographic
Venus, explained
Quadruple Conjunction The moon, Venus, Mars, and the star Spica appear in a quadruple conjunction as seen from Azul, Argentina. From its scorching temperatures to its oddball rotation, there's a lot to learn about the second planet from the sun. On September 14, 2020, scientists announced the possible detection of phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus. It's too early to say what's creating the gas, but if the result is confirmed, one possibility is that it was made by microbial life floating in the planet's thick atmosphere. Find out more about the tantalizing, if controversial, finding here. The first spacecraft to set mechanical feet on another planet landed on Venus. In the 1960s and '70s, the former Soviet Union's Venera probes plunged through the planet's punishing atmosphere, with a handful even sending back data from its rocky surface. In December 1970, for instance, the Venera 8 lander transmitted atmospheric data for more than 50 minutes after its turbulent touchdown. These early missions provided an important lesson: Venus is like a massive pressure cooker. Although the planet is the second closest planet to the sun, it's by far the hottest of the eight worlds in our solar system. Its thick atmosphere is mostly made of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid, which traps the sun's heat and creates a runaway greenhouse effect. Thanks to this atmospheric blanket, temperatures on Venus' surface can soar over 880 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to melt lead. The surface pressure is around 90 times that on Earth, which would feel like standing under about a half a mile of water. Wintertime doesn't even provide a reprieve from the heat. With an axial tilt of three degrees, Venus has just one season: hot. The only planet named after a female figure, Venus is a celestial oddball. Though its rocks are shades of grey, its atmosphere imparts an eerie orange glow to the landscape. Together with Mercury, it's one of the few planets in our solar system without a moon. And like Uranus, it turns on its axis in the opposite direction to the rest of our celestial family. Due to this retrograde rotation, if you were to stand on Venus' surface, the sun would rise in the West and set in the East. But don't count on catching many Venusian sunsets; the planet turns stunningly slow. A single day there takes 243 Earth days—longer than a Venusian year, which lasts 225 Earth days. And because the planet rotates in the opposite direction as its orbit, 117 Earth days pass between each sunrise and sunset. Hellish Earth twin Despite the strange and scorching conditions, Venus shares a surprising number of features with Earth. Measuring 7,520 miles across, Venus is roughly the same diameter as our home planet. It also has a similar structure, sporting a rocky surface and an iron core, although the planet doesn't rotate fast enough to generate an Earth-like magnetic field. Thousands of volcanoes dot Venus' surface, some of which may still be active. Volcanic rock from cooled lava covers most of its surface—the oldest of which dates back some 500 million years. Many mountains also rise into Venusian skies. Its largest, dubbed Maxwell Montes, stands 36,000 feet tall. The processes driving the formation of this network of formations is unusual, however. Venus doesn't appear to harbor a churning seismic engine like that on Earth, which drives our bumper-car network of tectonic plates. Yet the planet does appear to have a spidery network of breaks in its surface, hinting at an entirely new type of plate tectonics. Scientists suspect that for up to two billion years after it formed, the planet may have even been habitable—harboring liquid oceans on its surface. Fascination with what drove that transition from happy to hellish has led many scientists to campaign for more robotic visits to Venus. Light bringer Venus' dense cloud cover has benefits for us Earthlings. It reflects the sun's rays, making the planet the brightest in the night sky. It's often called the morning star or evening star because its bright, steady glow persists either around sunrise or sunset. Ancient peoples spotted these dazzling points in the sky and believed them to be two different objects, one that glows in the morning and another that glows in the evening. Similar to Mercury, Venus can occasionally be seen making a lazy trip across the sun's face, known as a transit. But while Mercury zips across the sun every 13 to 14 years, Venus transits are much more rare. The planet's orbit is almost a perfect circle but is slightly tipped relative to Earth's path around our star. This means it's incredibly hard for the sun, Venus, and Earth to align in the right way. The last time a transit of Venus happened was in 2012, and it won't happen again until 2117. Magazine for all ages starting at $25/year
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
James Webb telescope captures images of possible newly discovered exoplanet
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured evidence of a planet beyond the solar system for the first time since its launch in 2021. The exoplanet, a planet beyond our solar system, has been dubbed TWA 7b and orbits the young nearby star TWA 7, NASA said. Scientists believe the exoplanet is around the mass of Saturn and is about 50 times the distance of Earth from the Sun, according to NASA. Usually, planets of this size outside of our solar system are difficult to detect, but scientists used a technique called high-contrast imaging to detect the exoplanet, NASA said. Images of the exoplanet were taken using a coronagraph, which allows researchers to suppress the bright glare of a star to reveal faint nearby objects. Scientists said there was a very small chance the images could show a background galaxy, but evidence "strongly points to the source being a previously undiscovered planet." "Our observations reveal a strong candidate for a planet shaping the structure of the TWA 7 debris disk, and its position is exactly where we expected to find a planet of this mass," said lead researcher Anne-Marie Lagrange. The exoplanet could be a young and cold planet with a mass around 0.3 times that of Jupiter and a temperature near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, according to initial analysis from researchers. The first time scientists discovered an exoplanet was back in 1992. Astronomers have discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets since then, but none of them are known to be habitable. Hegseth slams Iran strikes initial assessment that contradicts Trump's take Young Cuban girl asks Trump to lift travel ban stopping her from joining mom in U.S. Hegseth lashes out at media over Iran strike reporting
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Mystery behind cold blob in the Atlantic Ocean finally solved
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Researchers have finally answered a longstanding question about a giant patch of cold water in the Atlantic Ocean, blaming a change in ocean currents for the unexpected cooling. The anomaly, located just south of Greenland, is — perhaps counterintuitively — called the North Atlantic Warming Hole, and it has been stumping scientists for years. Despite the steady warming of ocean waters around the world, this one area got colder by up to 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.3 degrees Celsius) over the past century. By analyzing ocean temperatures and salinity patterns, scientists linked this mysterious cooling to the slowing of a system of ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The changing AMOC is "a weakening of a major part of the climate system," David Thornalley, a paleoceanographer at University College London who was not involved in the new research, told Live Science in an email. The cold blob has long been a point of disagreement among oceanographers. Some believed that ocean dynamics were responsible, while others suggested atmospheric influences like aerosol pollution were the cause, according to a statement from the University of California, Riverside. These findings, published May 28 in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, could help settle the disagreement, providing evidence that ocean dynamics are responsible. Related story: Key Atlantic current is weakening much faster than scientists had predicted There are only about 20 years of direct AMOC observations, so the research team relied on other data to track older ocean movements. They used temperature and salinity data, which are correlated to current speed, to uncover the AMOC's patterns from the last century, and used 94 different ocean models to assess the changes. With a clear timeline of the AMOC's behavior in hand, the researchers found that only the models that included slowed Atlantic currents matched the real-world cooling. "It's a very robust correlation," study co-author Kai-Yuan Li, a climate scientist at the University of California, Riverside, said in the statement. Better understanding of how the AMOC is slowing will not only explain the cold blob but will also contribute to climate forecasting, the statement noted. The AMOC and the anomaly it created both influence European weather patterns, including rainfall and wind. Marine ecosystems may also be negatively affected by the changing currents, as water temperature and salinity can determine local habitability for some species. RELATED STORIES —Large patch of the Atlantic Ocean near the equator has been cooling at record speeds — and scientists can't figure out why —'We don't really consider it low probability anymore': Collapse of key Atlantic current could have catastrophic impacts, says oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf —The Atlantic Ocean is widening. Here's why. There's also concern that the AMOC will collapse. Scientists believe that it will weaken by at least 20% by 2100, but it's unclear whether a collapse is imminent, said Nicholas Foukal, an oceanographer at the University of Georgia's Skidaway Institute of Oceanography who was not involved in the new study. "In some sense, the debate is over how bad the effects will be and whether we will have time to adapt to the changes, not whether it will happen," Foukal told Live Science in an email.
