1February  2022.

Introduction:

The Rice University researchers recently discovered a new wasp species called Neuroterus Valhalla. It is a weird species that spends 11 months of a year locked in a crypt. It is just a millimetre long.

About N.valhalla

• It was discovered outside a student pub Valhalla.
•  And thus named after it.
•  The species was collected from a oak tree in 2018.
• The scientists are yet to find the male member of the species.
• The females lay eggs in trees.
•  It is a cynipid gall wasp.
•  It uses chemicals to produce crypts or galls around its eggs.
• Around 1,300 gall wasps are known to human.
• They are distributed in Europe and North America.
• The reproduction of gall wasps is partly parthenogenesis.
• Parthenogenesis is asexual reproduction where growth and reproduction occur without the fertilization of sperm.

About the Crypt

• The females of the N.valhalla lay a chemical substance along with the eggs.
•  This chemical substance coax (arrange itself into something) with the tree to form the crypt or gall.
•  The gall provides shelter to the egg.

Life in the gall

• The wasp almost spends its entire lifetime in the gall.
•  After emerging from the gall, the wasp lives only for three or four days.
•  They mate within these four days, lay eggs.
• They don’t and do nothing. Their only purpose is reproduction.

About the eggs

• The N.valhalla wasp lays eggs twice a year.
•  Also, only alternating generations lay eggs.
• These wasps lay eggs on flowers. Some trees flower only once a year.
• In such cases, they lay their eggs on the new stem buds.
•  When they hatch and come out in the wrong time and if there are no flowers (or suitable places to lay eggs), they just die.

Habitat

• So far, these wasps have been found in oak trees.
• They are spread in the US and in Mexico. Climate change and deforestation is threatening the species.