Parasitic wasps in ants’ nest video

This video says about itself:

Females of the parasitoid wasp Elasmosoma luxemburgense ovipositing in workers of the ant Formica rufibarbis. In the last sequence a worker ant catches a wasp while flying. Recorded in slow motion video, at a rate of 300 frames per second. Almazán (Soria, Spain), August, 2010.

Source: Cees van Achterberg, José María Durán (2011) Oviposition behaviour of four ant parasitoids (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Euphorinae, Neoneurini and Ichneumonidae, Hybrizontinae), with the description of three new European species. ZooKeys 125 : 59-106, freely available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.125.1754

See also here.

Formica rufibarbis ants in Dutch Flevoland: here.

Kamikaze ants protect the colony: here.

This study reports a novel form of interference behaviour between the invasive wasp Vespula vulgaris and the New Zealand native ant Prolasius advenus. By videotaping interactions at bait stations, we found that wasps commonly remove ant competitors from food resources by picking up the workers in their mandibles, flying backward and dropping them unharmed some distance from the food. Both the frequency and the efficiency of the wasp behaviour significantly increased with the abundance of ant competitors. Ant removals were the most common interference events initiated by wasps when ants were numerous, while intraspecific conflicts among wasps were prominent when few ants were present. The ‘ant-dropping’ behaviour emphasizes how asymmetry in body sizes between competitors can lead to a pronounced form of interference, related to asymmetric locomotion modes: here.

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