Conserving with our wistful reverie of hotter occasions to return, we cease by a sandy yard in Maryland on a heat summer season’s day to satisfy one other sand wasp. This little magnificence, Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus, is typically known as the four-lined-stink bug hunter because of its propensity to seize stink bugs and different members of the true bug clan (Hemiptera) that function meals for its younger. Though I didn’t have the chance to witness a looking victory of the four-lined-stink bug hunter, a number of researchers and naturalists have seen this intelligent tracker provisioning their burrows with nymphs of the noxious brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB). Sand wasps be a part of a cabal of different helpful predators, together with murderer bugs, spiders, and mantids we met in earlier episodes contributing to the demise of BMSB in our area. Approach to go wasps!
Acknowledgements
Two fascinating articles, “Survey of Native Biocontrol Brokers of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug in Pennsylvania Fruit Orchards and Adjoining Habitat” by David Biddinger, John Tooker, Alex Surcica, and Greg Krawczyk, and “Nesting Habits of the Sand Wasp Stictia maculata (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae) in Costa Rica” by Robert Matthews, Richard Saunders and Janice Matthews, had been consulted in getting ready this episode.
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