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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Two Small Wasps

How can you even see those tiny bugs, my favorite skeptic asked the other day as I bent to examine some smallish bug or other we passed on the way out the door. What he doesn't know won't hurt him: I am a mutant with macro vision specially enhanced to key in on insect-like movements. Nothing with six legs and chitin eludes my X-Woman vision!

This unidentified small wasp posed attractively in front of the coreopsis flowers.

Here is a gaura stem loaded with aphids. There is a tiny wasp near the center of the photo. This is a parasite that lays its eggs on the aphids. It spent a bit of time, longer than I watched, going from aphid to aphid, leaving its little time bombs on the rear end of the aphids' abdomens. You can just see a few yellowish eggs near the wasp.

If only my camera could keep up with my eyes.



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