"Valhalla" .. The discovery of a new wasp that spends 11 months of the year trapped in the "catacombs"

Scientists have discovered a new species of wasps in Houston whose life cycle includes spending 11 months of the year enclosed in protective "cataves".

The new type of insect was called "Neuroterus valhalla", and its length is only one millimeter.

Although the name may seem to have a mythical connotation, it actually honors the Rice University graduate student pub of the same name, which is where the discovery of these little hornets occurred in a live oak tree outside.

According to the scientists, 'Valhalla' or N. valhalla is the first insect species to be described along with the publication of its fully sequenced genome.

The study was carried out by the laboratory of Rice University evolutionary biologist Scott Egan, who over the course of eight years discovered many new species of wasps such as N. valhalla or its predators.

According to the scientists, there are more than 1,000 different species of wasps (small insects that parasitize exclusively on plants), and all of them have a life cycle that involves deceiving the host tree into feeding and sheltering their young.

When they lay their eggs, they do so along with a special chemical cocktail that causes the tree to form a "crypt" or "gallbladder" around the egg, which serves to house the egg and also provides a source of nutrition for the larvae when they hatch.

Once they appear, they only live three or four days, and they don't eat.

"Its only purpose is to mate and lay eggs," Brandao Dias, who first collected the wasp samples in 2018, said of the young wasps.

Abranoids come in different shapes, with some forming on the underside of leaves, some inside twigs, others on tree blossoms, and the most recent is where a biology student first collected samples from N. valhalla in the spring of 2018.

Brandau Dias and his colleagues had been collecting oak honey while searching for an entirely different species of wasps known to make flowers their home, but DNA analysis revealed that they managed to catch more than expected.

"They lay their eggs in the oaks that develop," Brandao Dias added.

"They develop in oaks on the flowers, and then they emerge. That happens in March. But the flowers happen once a year, and by the time they appear, there are no more flowers to lay eggs on. So they have to lay eggs on a different texture," he noted.

In fact, many Apraneas lay their eggs twice a year and not necessarily in the same type of place every time, which is why it took nearly four years for scientists to feel confident in publishing their description of N. valhalla as a new species.

As Professor Egan explained, it is not unusual for alternating generations of abryanids to be mixed into completely different species, making genetic testing of samples across different parts of their life cycle essential.

The experiments, conducted in a Petri dish, allowed the team to see where N. valhalla had gone after emerging from Rice's oaks, and catching her as she laid her eggs elsewhere.

According to Mr. Brandao Dias, the generation of Valhalla wasps that hatch in a flock of live oak mature from fully formed adult eggs in about 2-3 weeks, but their successors spend 11 months growing inside the branches.

And she has to come out on time for the tree to bloom.

The biologist explained that if she came out at the wrong time, and there were no flowers around, she would not be able to lay her eggs and die.

It is not clear at present exactly how N. valhalla coordinates its appearance with the flowering of the trees, which can vary from year to year.

For now, scientists are eagerly waiting to see how last year's winter storm in February, which caused record cold temperatures across Houston and delayed the flowering of live oaks, may have affected the insects.

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