Date: 19.03.2013

Parasitic wasp named after Kill Bill character

An article led by Prof. Donald Quicke describes three new species of parasitic wasp; one after Beatrix Kiddo from Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ film (Cystomastacoides kiddo) ...

An article led by Prof. Donald Quicke describes three new species of parasitic wasp; one after Beatrix Kiddo from Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ film (Cystomastacoides kiddo), and another after DQ's favorite novelist  Nicole Peeler (C. nicolepeelerae) [ http://www.pensoft.net/news.php?n=220&SESID=fb0e287350d22bfc02906d3f963b17ea ] [ http://www.sci-news.com/biology/article00947.html ]. Thanks to our laboratory of tropical ecology the name of the last one is much more boring (C. asotaphaga). However, it is the only one for which we know the species of caterpillars it attacks. It is Asota plana, a moth feeding on fig trees. Even though we have reared more than 500 caterpillars of this species on our field station in Papua New Guinea [ http://www.entu.cas.cz/png ], only four caterpillars found on a single day were parasitized by this species. It is a mystery how are these parasitic wasps able to survive in the rainforest in such low population densities. The original article is open access at [ http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/JHR.31.3385 ].

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