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Updated: May 21, 2025
At one time I had my doubts about Panzer's Tachytes, whom I grudged a prey to which the White-banded Sphex might have laid claim. To-day I have no such doubts: she is an honest worker and her game is really the result of her hunting.
The entrances to the Tachytes' dwelling open upon the little upright bank of the section. At the beginning of July the work is in full swing. It must have been going on already for a week or two, for I find very forward larvae, as well as recent cocoons.
This last date is best-suited to explain the presence of the parasitic larva and its pseudochrysalis in the Tachytes' burrows from July onwards. Moreover, the Cerocoma is very abundant in the neighbourhood of the sand-heaps haunted by the Tachytes, while the Mylabris does not occur there.
This hamlet, small in extent, but nevertheless densely populated, shows us the Mantis-slayer under a moral aspect which is not shared by the Locust slayer, Panzer's Tachytes, who resembles her so closely in costume.
The Hairy Ammophila, operating on her caterpillar, likewise recoils, but progressively, from one segment to the next. Her deliberate surgery might receive a quasi-explanation if we ascribe it to a certain uniformity. With the Tachytes and the Mantis this paltry argument escapes us.
There is no difficulty about seeing the Tachytes operate in our presence; we have only to resort to the method of substitution, which has already done me so much service, that is, to deprive the huntress of her prey and at once to give her, in exchange, a living Mantis of about the same size.
No, for in some Bembex-burrows we shall find Sphaerophoriae, those slender, thong-like creatures, and Bombylii, looking like velvet pincushions; no again, for in the pits of the Silky Ammophila we shall see, side by side, the caterpillar of the ordinary shape and the Measuring-worm, a living pair of compasses which progresses by alternately opening out and closing; no, once more, for in the storerooms of Stizus ruficornis and the Mantis-hunting Tachytes we see stacked beside the Mantis the Empusa, her unrecognizable caricature.
The close similarity in form, in colouring and, above all, in habits seem to refer the Tachytes to the same origin. This is ample; let us be satisfied with it. And now please tell me, what did this prototype of the Sphegidae hunt? Was its diet varied or uniform? If we cannot decide, let us examine the two cases. The diet was varied. I heartily congratulate the first born of the Sphex-wasps.
It is hard and mineralized, this is to say, the warp and woof of silk are hidden by a thick encrustation of sand. This composite structure seems to me characteristic of the family; at all events I find it in the three species whose cocoons I know. If the Tachytes are nearly related to the Spheges in diet, they are far removed from them in the industry of their larvae.
Having visited Sérignan for the purpose of scientific investigations, he had searched the Tachytes' sand-heaps in my company and taken back to Paris a few pseudochrysalids of grubs fed on Mantes, in order to follow their development.
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