A little serving of creepy…

So I was going to make my next post about deadheading but I stumbled upon something today that really up’d the cool factor (in an incredibly geeky sort of way).

Garden pests. It is a love hate relationship for most gardeners. OK, mostly hate but I love them for how cool they can be! Take fall webworm (Hyphantria cunea) for example…

A fall webworm nest.

Now that’s a party of creepy crawlies. With that said, I don’t think the photo does them much justice. How about this…

EEEEEWWWW! Now do you have the heebie jeebies?! These posessed looking caterpillars are actually twitching as a defense response to help deter predators. At first I thought that I was the culprit of this convulsive show but then I took a closer look, pressed ‘record’ on the phone’s camera, and watched the drama unfold…

The situation just got even creepier, don’t you think? What you just saw flying around this caterpillar nest was a parasitoid wasp.

Parasitoid wasps must have been the inpiration behind the well-known Alien movies. Afterall, many species will pierce their prey with a long ovipositor (the bum end that you could see stabbing at the nest) to lay an egg inside their prey. This egg hatches and the larva then proceeds to feed on the prey from the inside. As wasp larva will often leave the organs for dessert, it is possible that the prey can live right up until the wasp larva emerges from it’s body. 100% Alien style. Yuck….and cool…mostly yuck (I think?).

As for this specific wasp? I am sending out the video to have it identified and will update this post when I know exactly what it is and it’s specific life cycle.

So…how does all this relate to your garden? Well clearly fall webworm is active in the landscape right now, feeding on trees. While fall webworm is not usually detrimental to the health of your trees, if you look up and see tents among the branches (that are within reach), you can prune them out and destroy them to control webworm populations. (Tent caterpillars are another pest that can be found earlier in the growing season. These critters will also make nests within the branches of your trees and shrubs and they can be quite destructive, so pruning out or removing nests is generally a good habit to adopt.)

What if you can’t reach the nests? You can rest assured that there are some natural control mechanisms at play… with the parasitoid wasps certainly taking up your cause.

Welcome to the wacky world of garden pests (and beneficials).