page_title: Parasitoid wasp
section_title: Life cycle
hierarchical_section_title: Parasitoid wasp / Parasitoidism / Life cycle
caption_attribution_description: English: Potter Wasp building mud nest near completion, France
context_page_description: Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causing the death of these hosts. Different species specialise in hosts from different insect orders, most often Lepidoptera, though some select beetles, flies, or bugs; the spider wasps exclusively attack spiders.
  Parasitoid wasp species differ in which host life-stage they attack: eggs, larvae, pupae, or adults. They mainly follow one of two major strategies within parasitism: either they are endoparasitic, developing inside the host, and koinobiont, allowing the host to continue to feed, develop, and moult; or they are ectoparasitic, developing outside the host, and idiobiont, paralysing the host immediately. Some endoparasitic wasps of the superfamily Ichneumonoidea have a mutualistic relationship with polydnaviruses, the viruses suppressing the host's immune defenses.
context_section_description: On or inside the host the parasitoid egg hatches into a larva or two or more larvae (polyembryony). Endoparasitoid eggs can absorb fluids from the host body and grow several times in size from when they were first laid before hatching. The first instar larvae is often highly mobile and may have strong mandibles or other structures to compete with other parasitoid larvae. The following instars are generally more grub-like. Parasitoid larvae have incomplete digestive systems with no rear opening. This prevents the hosts from being contaminated by their wastes. The larva feeds on the host's tissues until ready to pupate; by then the host is generally either dead or almost so. A meconium, or the accumulated wastes from the larva is cast out as the larva transitions to a prepupa. Depending on its species, the parasitoid then may eat its way out of the host or remain in the more or less empty skin. In either case it then generally spins a cocoon and pupates.
  As adults, parasitoid wasps feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Females of some species will also drink hemolymph from hosts to gain additional nutrients for egg production.
caption: Potter wasp (Eumeninae), an idiobiont, building mud nest; she will then provision it with paralysed insects, on which she lays her eggs; she then seals the nest and provides no further care for her young.
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