Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
On the 16th of July, 1883, I was digging, with my son Émile, in the sandy heap where, a few days earlier, I had been observing the labours and the surgery of the Mantis-killing Tachytes. My purpose was to collect a few cocoons of this Digger-wasp. The cocoons were turning up in abundance under my pocket-trowel, when Émile presented me with an unknown object.
The Tachytes builds in quite another fashion, although its work, once finished, does not differ from that of the Bembex. The larva surrounds itself, to begin with, about the middle of its body with a silken girdle which a number of threads, very irregularly distributed, hold in place and connect with the walls of the cell. Sand is collected, within reach of the worker, on this general scaffolding.
It is unnecessary for the purpose in hand to quote them all. It will serve our object better if I give the detailed inventory of the Bee-eating Philanthus and of the Mantis-hunting Tachytes, considered especially with regard to the quantity of the victuals. The slayer of Hive-bees is frequently in my neighbourhood; and I can obtain from her with the least trouble the greatest number of data.
It is the Mole-cricket who, seeking for a root to suit her, has excavated the winding tunnel, with investigation-galleries grafted to either side of the main road. The passage is free therefore, or at most blocked by a few landslips, of which the Tachytes will easily dispose. This explains her rapid journey underground. But what does she do there?
Do not let us forget the Philanthus, who takes no account either of the fissures beneath the abdominal plates or of the wide hiatus behind the corselet, but plunges her weapon, at the base of the throat, through a gap of a fraction of a millimetre. Let us just mention the Mantis-hunting Tachytes.
The first are workers in mosaic, encrusting a network of silk and sand; the second weave pure silk. Of smaller size and clad in black with trimmings of silvery down on the edge of the abdominal segments, the Tarsal Tachytes frequents the ledges of soft limestone in fairly populous colonies. Any one wishing to clear up this point will always recognize the quarrelsome insect by its behaviour.
The Mantis-hunting Tachytes consumes its heap of Mantes, the horny envelope included, without leaving any remains but scanty crumbs, quite insufficient to establish the number of items provided. After the meal is completed, any inventory of the rations becomes impossible. "The Hunting Wasps": chapters 4 and 16.
If the larva, as I suspect, is obliged to find the Tachytes' game-larder for itself and to visit a second and a third, when the first is too frugally furnished, it may be imagined that the hazard of the road does not favour all in the same way, but rather allots abundance to one and penury to another. The grub that does not eat its fill remains small, while the one that gluts itself grows fat.
Among these I have tested such as chance threw in my way: those of various Bembeces, all fed on Flies, those of the Palarus, whose bill of fare consists of a very large assortment of Hymenoptera; those of the Tarsal Tachytes, supplied with young Locusts; those of the Nest-building Odynerus, furnished with Chrysomela-grubs; those of the Sand Cerceris, endowed with a pinch of Weevils.
Is this due to extraordinary powers of excavation on her part? By no means: the Anathema Tachytes is an energetic tunneller, no doubt, but, after all, is incapable of performing so great a labour in so short a time. If the underground worker is so swift in her progress, it is because the track followed has already been covered by another. The trail is ready prepared.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking