The reporter learned from the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that the park, together with scholars from Sun Yat-sen University and South China Agricultural University, has found new species of rare parasitic wasps. The study was recently published in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research. According to reports, the discovery has added 2 new species of chinese hermitized bees: giant spot hermit bees and black belted herbs. Among them, the specimens of the giant spotted chelated wasp were collected from the South China Botanical Garden and The Yunkai Mountain in Guangdong Province.
The family Parasitic wasps belong to the hymenoptera hammer horned wasp family Diaprioidea, containing only 1 genus, parasitic wasps genus Ismarus, is a very rare type of parasitic wasps, currently known in the world only more than 50 species, China known less than 10 species. This type of parasitic wasp is actually a repararasitial wasp, hosted by the larvae of the crayidae Driniidae of the parasitic hemiptera head-beaked Auschenorrhyncha insects (such as leafhoppers, waxhoppers, and horned cicadas, etc.), hence the Chinese name parasitic wasps.
According to reports, studies have shown that the hermit wasps prefer high-altitude woodlands in warm areas and low-altitude woodlands in colder areas. The new species found in this study is a warm low-altitude area. This suggests that the range of habitats that the host wasps can adapt to is much larger than originally thought.
Crawfish is an important pest of agriculture and forestry leafhopper natural enemies, in the biological control of leafhopper has been used, and the parasitic wasp is a heavy parasitic wasp of the crawfish, will reduce the effect of the crayfish control of the leafhopper, understand the adaptation range of the host crayfish to the environment and climate, can help people in the use of the crawfish as a biological control agent to study and reduce the negative effect of the host wasp.
Although the hermit wasp is a natural enemy of the crayfish, it can be considered a pest in a sense and is of great significance to the study of its species diversity. A healthy ecosystem should contain more stable species of each trophic level. As the natural enemy of crayfish, their presence means that the species and population of crayfish in the South China Botanical Garden are relatively large and have a certain role in natural control of pests. Therefore, the hermit wasp can be used as an environmental indicator species to assess the health of ecosystems.
It is worth mentioning that Luo Shixiao, a researcher at the South China Botanical Garden, has been monitoring the diversity of tropical and subtropical pollinators, including the South China Botanical Garden, and has found more than 10 species of cheetfish in the South China Botanical Garden. Individual cetacean species have a high parasitic rate for leafhoppers and play a role in the natural control of leafhopper pests.
"Continuous monitoring data shows that the South China Botanical Garden not only provides a place for ex situ conservation of plants, but also facilitates the reproduction of insect species diversity." Luo Shixiao said.
Source: China Science Daily