Pepsis species vs wolf spider
ISO400 | f/22 | 1/200 @55mm, under the sun with fill flash
I find parasitic wasps the most challenging ones to get their pictures taken, they are not social so you can’t find a bunch sitting in a nest like we are used for most. They are solitary, and when looking around for hosts they barely sit still, always walking and frenetically scanning the ground with their antennae. Pepsis is a genus with about 130 species from the Americas, these wasps belongs to the Pompilidae family bearing some of the biggest wasps in the world. They are specialized in spider hunting, hence the famous tarantula hawk nickname for some of the species.
The spiders captured by the wasps are not directly used for feeding, instead they are dragged over to a previously built hide, a burrow most of the time, where an egg will be laid on the paralised spider, and it will stay alive long enough to be eaten by the larva after this egg hatches.
Around here one of it’s common names is “cavalo de cão” which is something close to devil’s horse. These wasps might strike fear due the size and the seemingly painful sting (second most painful sting in Schmidt Index), but they are not agressive towards what they don’t see as a threat or prey. I once put my hand in front of the path one was scanning on the ground to see it’s reaction, expecting it would find the shape of my hand similar to a tarantula and maybe sting me, but it just examined it and crawled over to the other side.
I always find awesome when any hint of learning is discovered in arthropods, and for these wasps at least in one species it’s already known that it gains experience with each host it captures, becoming more skilled with time.[1]
Knowing this makes me think if the one I saw carrying that wolf spider frontally by the chelicerae has learnt that this way the spider can’t bite even if somehow not paralised by the venom. The wasp released the spider two or three times to scan around for some seconds before grabbing the spider again and continue to it’s burrow, and it always grabbed by the same spot on the chelicerae.
Pepsis species vs wolf spider
ISO400 | f/22 | 1/200 @70mm, under the sun with fill flash