Megastigmus rosae

Megastigmus rosae

Megastigmus rosae is a Chalcid wasp (Chalcidoidea) of the family Torymidae. The female deposits her eggs in Rose hips and the larvae feed on the seeds inside.
Megastigmus rosae - Male On request, just making two images of a male M. rosae available in somewhat higher res than on waarneming.nl NOTE: The wings on this one didn't quite come out nicely (not fully pumped op / straightened properly) Image mostly goes to demonstrate darker overall colours (compared to the females) with the conspicuous yellow tip of the abdomen. The species was recently identified as "new" for the Netherlands, from this population in Jane's garden. Males seemed to be quite rare (mostly parthenogentic reproduction, probably), but this year Jane spotted quite a few males from a second generation that emerged over the last week. This one emerged from a rose hip that she had put in a box for other purposes, so she had it in a box. Unfortunately the wings didn't come out quite right on this one. Image of same (damaged) male, grooming: https://www.jungledragon.com/image/139498/megastigmus_rosae_-_male_grooming.html P.S. For comparison, another male with good wings and darker colour: https://www.jungledragon.com/image/139531/megastigmus_rosae_-_male_darker.html Chalcid wasp,Chalcidoidea,Jane's garden,Megastigmus,Megastigmus rosae,Rosa rugosa,Torymidae,nl: Rimpelroos

Appearance

At around roughly 3mm these Torymid wasps are fairly large for Chalcids.
The females of this species have a shorter ovipositor than the otherwise similar Megastigmus aculeatus that (mostly) shares the same hosts. Overall colours are a tad darker and the spot on the wings is larger.

References:

Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.

Taxonomy
KingdomAnimalia
DivisionArthropoda
ClassInsecta
OrderHymenoptera
FamilyTorymidae
GenusMegastigmus
SpeciesM. rosae
Photographed in
Netherlands