Based in Brazil, Fernanda Ferreira is a science writer who covers a range of STEM (and occasionally non-STEM) topics, from textile conservation to vaccine stockpiles.
“The young, scaly creature bursts from the torso of its doomed host in a mix of guts and blood and stares blinkingly at its new environment.”
For most people the sentence above describes a famous scene from Ridley Scott’s Alien, but for many insects it’s a daily reality.
The inspiration for H.R. Giger’s nightmarish alien comes from one of nature’s most ingenious predators: parasitoid wasps. These wasps lay their eggs in other insects or their larvae, transforming their prey into a living incubator that feeds and protects the growing wasp larvae. This behavior is present in many wasp species, and their prey includes a diverse array of insects and arachnids [9]. In Alien, Sigourney Weaver saves herself and the last member of the spaceship Nostromo from the alien, but if you can’t count on Warrant Officer Ripley to save the day, how do you protect yourself and your kin from a parasitoid wasp?
