Latest news with #Sirenobethyluscharybdis
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
This deadly prehistoric wasp captured prey with 'Venus flytrap' abs
In Greek mythology, the sea monster Charybdis swallowed and regurgitated large volumes of water, creating whirlpools powerful enough to drag passing ships to their doom. Ninety-nine million years earlier, in the mid-Cretaceous, the wasp Sirenobethylus charybdis deployed a similar deadly trap that earned it a scientific name inspired by the mythological monster. A Venus flytrap-like structure on the wasp's abdomen held captives in place as the wasp deposited its eggs into its victim, forcing it to incubate its offspring. That's the finding of a new paper published in the journal BMC Biology that examined dozens of wasps entrapped in amber. 'This discovery reveals that ancient insects had already developed sophisticated prey capture strategies,' says Wu Qiong, the lead author and a doctoral student from the College of Life Sciences at Capital Normal University, 'It's reshaping our understanding of parasitic wasp evolution.' The amber containing the specimen Sirenobethylus charybdis is no larger than a dime. In 2015, a Chinese fossil collector purchased these fossils from Myanmar's Kachin state and donated them to Capital Normal University of China. To the naked eye, Sirenobethylus charybdis looks like a modern wasp with a wider-than-average abdomen. 'At first, we attributed this to deformation during preservation, especially since such deformation and distortion is common during fossilization,' says Wu. But under closer inspection—through microscope and CT scans—a remarkable structure was revealed. The abdominal tip of the wasp featured three flaps arranged in a configuration similar to a Venus flytrap. On multiple fossils, the lower flap opened at slightly different angles, suggesting it can move and grab onto things. Just like a Venus flytrap, the underside of the lower flap is also lined with long, flexible hairs that sense movement. When an unsuspecting insect triggered these hairs, it may have activated the swift closure of the abdominal flaps, allowing the wasp to secure the host. Scientists don't think the wasp killed its victims right away but instead used it as a living incubator for its offspring. Numerous stiff, hair-like structures on the upper side of the lower flap, along with the relatively pliable middle flap, would gently but firmly secure the host until the wasp finished laying its eggs. Only then would the wasp release its captive. 'The 'Venus flytrap' structure exhibited by the abdomen of Sirenobethylus charybdis is unprecedented in the entire history of Mesozoic insect research,' says Wu, 'nor has anything similar been documented in living insects.' Chenyang Cai, who was not involved in the study, is a paleoentomologist at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He praised the fossil wasp as a 'unique' discovery. He explained that Sirenobethylus charybdis is 'very different from today's wasps or other insects' and its existence 'highlights the diversity of insects in the mid-Cretaceous period, revealing forms we had never imagined'. Scientists don't know which insects Sirenobethylus charybdis used to host its eggs. Given the small size of its trapping structure, these hosts were possibly tiny, agile insects such as springtails or small flies. By studying similar species living today, the team pieced together other theories about this prehistoric wasp. As a distant relative of Sirenobethylus charybdis, the present-day pincer wasp has also evolved the ability to trap its host—temporarily restraining it, laying eggs, and then releasing it. Female pincer wasps have front legs modified with a pinching apparatus, allowing them to firmly grasp hosts when they lay eggs. These wingless hunters, with large eyes and slender legs, are well adapted for moving swiftly and capturing other insects. In contrast, Sirenobethylus charybdis appears to be more cumbersome. They have smaller eyes and shorter legs, which suggest they were slower than pincer wasps. The grasping structure located at the rear of their body also makes it difficult to capture hosts in motion. Based on these characteristics, researchers think it was a sit-and-wait predator—likely remaining stationary and ambushing hosts that wandered too close. Mid-Cretaceous amber fossils like this one, noted Cai, reveal insects of that age were 'incredibly diverse—perhaps even more specialized in some cases than what we see today.' Such findings, he emphasizes, are 'a crucial reminder that studying only living species will never give us the complete story of evolution.'
National Geographic
15-05-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
This deadly prehistoric wasp captured prey with 'Venus flytrap' abs
In Greek mythology, the sea monster Charybdis swallowed and regurgitated large volumes of water, creating whirlpools powerful enough to drag passing ships to their doom. Ninety-nine million years earlier, in the mid-Cretaceous, the wasp Sirenobethylus charybdis deployed a similar deadly trap that earned it a scientific name inspired by the mythological monster. A Venus flytrap-like structure on the wasp's abdomen held captives in place as the wasp deposited its eggs into its victim, forcing it to incubate its offspring. That's the finding of a new paper published in the journal BMC Biology that examined dozens of wasps entrapped in amber. 'This discovery reveals that ancient insects had already developed sophisticated prey capture strategies,' says Wu Qiong, the lead author and a doctoral student from the College of Life Sciences at Capital Normal University, 'It's reshaping our understanding of parasitic wasp evolution.' The amber containing the specimen Sirenobethylus charybdis is no larger than a dime. In 2015, a Chinese fossil collector purchased these fossils from Myanmar's Kachin state and donated them to Capital Normal University of China. To the naked eye, Sirenobethylus charybdis looks like a modern wasp with a wider-than-average abdomen. 'At first, we attributed this to deformation during preservation, especially since such deformation and distortion is common during fossilization,' says Wu. But under closer inspection—through microscope and CT scans—a remarkable structure was revealed. The abdominal tip of the wasp featured three flaps arranged in a configuration similar to a Venus flytrap. On multiple fossils, the lower flap opened at slightly different angles, suggesting it can move and grab onto things. Just like a Venus flytrap, the underside of the lower flap is also lined with long, flexible hairs that sense movement. A closer examination of the fossil revealed a feature that allowed the wasp to grasp prey, similar to a Venus flytrap. When an unsuspecting insect triggered these hairs, it may have activated the swift closure of the abdominal flaps, allowing the wasp to secure the host. Scientists don't think the wasp killed its victims right away but instead used it as a living incubator for its offspring. Numerous stiff, hair-like structures on the upper side of the lower flap, along with the relatively pliable middle flap, would gently but firmly secure the host until the wasp finished laying its eggs. Only then would the wasp release its captive. 'The 'Venus flytrap' structure exhibited by the abdomen of Sirenobethylus charybdis is unprecedented in the entire history of Mesozoic insect research,' says Wu, 'nor has anything similar been documented in living insects.' Chenyang Cai, who was not involved in the study, is a paleoentomologist at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He praised the fossil wasp as a 'unique' discovery. He explained that Sirenobethylus charybdis is 'very different from today's wasps or other insects' and its existence 'highlights the diversity of insects in the mid-Cretaceous period, revealing forms we had never imagined'. Scientists don't know which insects Sirenobethylus charybdis used to host its eggs. Given the small size of its trapping structure, these hosts were possibly tiny, agile insects such as springtails or small flies. By studying similar species living today, the team pieced together other theories about this prehistoric wasp. As a distant relative of Sirenobethylus charybdis, the present-day pincer wasp has also evolved the ability to trap its host—temporarily restraining it, laying eggs, and then releasing it. Female pincer wasps have front legs modified with a pinching apparatus, allowing them to firmly grasp hosts when they lay eggs. These wingless hunters, with large eyes and slender legs, are well adapted for moving swiftly and capturing other insects. In contrast, Sirenobethylus charybdis appears to be more cumbersome. They have smaller eyes and shorter legs, which suggest they were slower than pincer wasps. The grasping structure located at the rear of their body also makes it difficult to capture hosts in motion. Based on these characteristics, researchers think it was a sit-and-wait predator—likely remaining stationary and ambushing hosts that wandered too close. Mid-Cretaceous amber fossils like this one, noted Cai, reveal insects of that age were 'incredibly diverse—perhaps even more specialized in some cases than what we see today.' Such findings, he emphasizes, are 'a crucial reminder that studying only living species will never give us the complete story of evolution.'
CNN
27-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Bizarre creature preserved in 99 million-year-old amber was ‘beyond imagination,' scientists say
Summary Paleontologists discovered a 99 million-year-old parasitic wasp species with a Venus flytrap-like structure on its abdomen. Preserved in amber, Sirenobethylus charybdis likely used the unique mechanism to trap insects into hosting its eggs, the study says. Researchers from Natural History Museum of Denmark and China's Capital Normal University documented the unusual movable structure. The captured insects likely served as unwitting hosts for the wasp's parasitic larvae. 'This is something unique, something I never expected to see," study coauthor Lars Vilhelmsen says. A newly identified parasitic wasp that buzzed and flew among dinosaurs 99 million years ago evolved a bizarre mechanism to snare other creatures and force them to unwittingly shelter its young, according to new research. Paleontologists studied 16 specimens of the tiny wasp preserved in amber dating back to the Cretaceous period that was previously unearthed in Myanmar. The previously unknown species, now named Sirenobethylus charybdis, had a Venus flytrap-like structure on its abdomen that could have allowed it to trap other insects, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal BMC Biology. 'When I looked at the first specimen, I noticed this expansion at the tip of the abdomen, and I thought this must be an air bubble. It's quite often you see air bubbles around specimens in amber,' said study coauthor Lars Vilhelmsen, a wasp expert and curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. 'But then I looked at a few more specimens and then went back to the first one. This was actually part of the animal.' Vilhelmsen and his colleagues from Capital Normal University in Beijing determined the structure was movable because it was preserved in different positions on different specimens. 'Sometimes the lower flap, as we call it, is open, and sometimes it's closed,' Vilhelmsen said. 'It was clearly a movable structure and something that was used to grasp something.' The closest comparison found in nature today is the Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant with hinged leaves that snap shut when prey flies inside, according to the new study. 'There's no way you can know how an insect that died 100 million years ago was living. So you look for analogs in modern insect fauna. Do we have anything among wasps or other groups that looks like this?' he said. 'And there's no real analog within insects. We had to go all the way out of the animal kingdom into the plant kingdom to find something that remotely resembled this.' However, the researchers reasoned that the wasp likely did not intend to kill with the bizarre grasping structure. Instead, they theorized that the wasp injected eggs into the trapped body before releasing it, using the creature as an unwitting host for its eggs. Its larvae then started their lives as parasites in or on the host's body and likely ended up eating the host entirely, Vilhelmsen said. The host was likely a flying insect of a similar size to the wasp, he added. Similar, although not identical behavior has been observed among living parasitoid wasp species. For example, a group of wasps known as cuckoo wasps lay their eggs in the nest of another wasp species, and the larvae feast on their new hosts' young once they hatch. Amber fossils offer a tantalizing, three-dimensional look at the distant past. Besides plants and flowers, a dinosaur tail, a crab, a hell ant, a spider mom and her young, and a firefly have been found entombed in globs of tree resin. A fossil enthusiast purchased the amber containing Sirenobethylus charybdis, which came from Myanmar's Kachin region near the border with China, several years ago and donated it to Capital Normal University's Key Laboratory of Insect Evolution and Environmental Changes in 2016, the authors said. Amber fossils have been some of paleontology's most exciting finds in recent years, but ethical concerns about the provenance of amber from the region have emerged, with some paleontologists calling for a moratorium on research on amber sourced from Myanmar following a 2021 military coup. The 'Cretaceous weirdo' Sirenobethylus charybdis adds to a growing list of insects from that time that 'had adaptations that are outside of the bounds of the critters that are alive today,' said Phil Barden, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who has worked with amber fossils. 'This is significant because there are around a million known insect species — even with all of that living diversity, there are still lots of unexpected surprises in the fossil record that are beyond imagination,' Barden, who was not involved in the study, said via email. However, he said, while plausible, the flytrap hypothesis is 'a bit speculative.' 'There appears to be clear evidence that the abdominal components would have had range of motion. There are also a number of setae, or hairs, that look to be in the right position to detect hosts and potentially immobilize them,' Barden said. He said it is possible the biological structures might have had another purpose such as detecting prey in soil or perhaps even for transporting baby wasps. 'Today, thousands of parasitoid wasp species are capable of immobilizing hosts without abdominal clasping. Why were these wasps unable to simply rely on their stings or incorporate their mouthparts into host capture as living species do?' Barden asked. Vilhelmsen said a key factor in his colleagues' interpretation of the fossil was the location of the wasp's egg-laying organ — right next to the trap-like structure. However, all the Sirenobethylus charybdis specimens examined so far are female wasps, and so the researchers weren't able to rule out that the structure could have played a role during mating, according to the study. 'This is something unique, something I never expected to see, and something I couldn't even imagine would be found,' Vilhelmsen said. 'It's a 10 out of 10.'
CNN
27-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Bizarre creature preserved in 99 million-year-old amber was ‘beyond imagination,' scientists say
Summary Paleontologists discovered a 99 million-year-old parasitic wasp species with a Venus flytrap-like structure on its abdomen. Preserved in amber, Sirenobethylus charybdis likely used the unique mechanism to trap insects into hosting its eggs, the study says. Researchers from Natural History Museum of Denmark and China's Capital Normal University documented the unusual movable structure. The captured insects likely served as unwitting hosts for the wasp's parasitic larvae. 'This is something unique, something I never expected to see," study coauthor Lars Vilhelmsen says. A newly identified parasitic wasp that buzzed and flew among dinosaurs 99 million years ago evolved a bizarre mechanism to snare other creatures and force them to unwittingly shelter its young, according to new research. Paleontologists studied 16 specimens of the tiny wasp preserved in amber dating back to the Cretaceous period that was previously unearthed in Myanmar. The previously unknown species, now named Sirenobethylus charybdis, had a Venus flytrap-like structure on its abdomen that could have allowed it to trap other insects, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal BMC Biology. 'When I looked at the first specimen, I noticed this expansion at the tip of the abdomen, and I thought this must be an air bubble. It's quite often you see air bubbles around specimens in amber,' said study coauthor Lars Vilhelmsen, a wasp expert and curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. 'But then I looked at a few more specimens and then went back to the first one. This was actually part of the animal.' Vilhelmsen and his colleagues from Capital Normal University in Beijing determined the structure was movable because it was preserved in different positions on different specimens. 'Sometimes the lower flap, as we call it, is open, and sometimes it's closed,' Vilhelmsen said. 'It was clearly a movable structure and something that was used to grasp something.' The closest comparison found in nature today is the Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant with hinged leaves that snap shut when prey flies inside, according to the new study. 'There's no way you can know how an insect that died 100 million years ago was living. So you look for analogs in modern insect fauna. Do we have anything among wasps or other groups that looks like this?' he said. 'And there's no real analog within insects. We had to go all the way out of the animal kingdom into the plant kingdom to find something that remotely resembled this.' However, the researchers reasoned that the wasp likely did not intend to kill with the bizarre grasping structure. Instead, they theorized that the wasp injected eggs into the trapped body before releasing it, using the creature as an unwitting host for its eggs. Its larvae then started their lives as parasites in or on the host's body and likely ended up eating the host entirely, Vilhelmsen said. The host was likely a flying insect of a similar size to the wasp, he added. Similar, although not identical behavior has been observed among living parasitoid wasp species. For example, a group of wasps known as cuckoo wasps lay their eggs in the nest of another wasp species, and the larvae feast on their new hosts' young once they hatch. Amber fossils offer a tantalizing, three-dimensional look at the distant past. Besides plants and flowers, a dinosaur tail, a crab, a hell ant, a spider mom and her young, and a firefly have been found entombed in globs of tree resin. A fossil enthusiast purchased the amber containing Sirenobethylus charybdis, which came from Myanmar's Kachin region near the border with China, several years ago and donated it to Capital Normal University's Key Laboratory of Insect Evolution and Environmental Changes in 2016, the authors said. Amber fossils have been some of paleontology's most exciting finds in recent years, but ethical concerns about the provenance of amber from the region have emerged, with some paleontologists calling for a moratorium on research on amber sourced from Myanmar following a 2021 military coup. The 'Cretaceous weirdo' Sirenobethylus charybdis adds to a growing list of insects from that time that 'had adaptations that are outside of the bounds of the critters that are alive today,' said Phil Barden, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who has worked with amber fossils. 'This is significant because there are around a million known insect species — even with all of that living diversity, there are still lots of unexpected surprises in the fossil record that are beyond imagination,' Barden, who was not involved in the study, said via email. However, he said, while plausible, the flytrap hypothesis is 'a bit speculative.' 'There appears to be clear evidence that the abdominal components would have had range of motion. There are also a number of setae, or hairs, that look to be in the right position to detect hosts and potentially immobilize them,' Barden said. He said it is possible the biological structures might have had another purpose such as detecting prey in soil or perhaps even for transporting baby wasps. 'Today, thousands of parasitoid wasp species are capable of immobilizing hosts without abdominal clasping. Why were these wasps unable to simply rely on their stings or incorporate their mouthparts into host capture as living species do?' Barden asked. Vilhelmsen said a key factor in his colleagues' interpretation of the fossil was the location of the wasp's egg-laying organ — right next to the trap-like structure. However, all the Sirenobethylus charybdis specimens examined so far are female wasps, and so the researchers weren't able to rule out that the structure could have played a role during mating, according to the study. 'This is something unique, something I never expected to see, and something I couldn't even imagine would be found,' Vilhelmsen said. 'It's a 10 out of 10.'
CNN
27-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Bizarre creature preserved in 99 million-year-old amber was ‘beyond imagination,' scientists say
Summary Paleontologists discovered a 99 million-year-old parasitic wasp species with a Venus flytrap-like structure on its abdomen. Preserved in amber, Sirenobethylus charybdis likely used the unique mechanism to trap insects into hosting its eggs, the study says. Researchers from Natural History Museum of Denmark and China's Capital Normal University documented the unusual movable structure. The captured insects likely served as unwitting hosts for the wasp's parasitic larvae. 'This is something unique, something I never expected to see," study coauthor Lars Vilhelmsen says. A newly identified parasitic wasp that buzzed and flew among dinosaurs 99 million years ago evolved a bizarre mechanism to snare other creatures and force them to unwittingly shelter its young, according to new research. Paleontologists studied 16 specimens of the tiny wasp preserved in amber dating back to the Cretaceous period that was previously unearthed in Myanmar. The previously unknown species, now named Sirenobethylus charybdis, had a Venus flytrap-like structure on its abdomen that could have allowed it to trap other insects, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal BMC Biology. 'When I looked at the first specimen, I noticed this expansion at the tip of the abdomen, and I thought this must be an air bubble. It's quite often you see air bubbles around specimens in amber,' said study coauthor Lars Vilhelmsen, a wasp expert and curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. 'But then I looked at a few more specimens and then went back to the first one. This was actually part of the animal.' Vilhelmsen and his colleagues from Capital Normal University in Beijing determined the structure was movable because it was preserved in different positions on different specimens. 'Sometimes the lower flap, as we call it, is open, and sometimes it's closed,' Vilhelmsen said. 'It was clearly a movable structure and something that was used to grasp something.' The closest comparison found in nature today is the Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant with hinged leaves that snap shut when prey flies inside, according to the new study. 'There's no way you can know how an insect that died 100 million years ago was living. So you look for analogs in modern insect fauna. Do we have anything among wasps or other groups that looks like this?' he said. 'And there's no real analog within insects. We had to go all the way out of the animal kingdom into the plant kingdom to find something that remotely resembled this.' However, the researchers reasoned that the wasp likely did not intend to kill with the bizarre grasping structure. Instead, they theorized that the wasp injected eggs into the trapped body before releasing it, using the creature as an unwitting host for its eggs. Its larvae then started their lives as parasites in or on the host's body and likely ended up eating the host entirely, Vilhelmsen said. The host was likely a flying insect of a similar size to the wasp, he added. Similar, although not identical behavior has been observed among living parasitoid wasp species. For example, a group of wasps known as cuckoo wasps lay their eggs in the nest of another wasp species, and the larvae feast on their new hosts' young once they hatch. Amber fossils offer a tantalizing, three-dimensional look at the distant past. Besides plants and flowers, a dinosaur tail, a crab, a hell ant, a spider mom and her young, and a firefly have been found entombed in globs of tree resin. A fossil enthusiast purchased the amber containing Sirenobethylus charybdis, which came from Myanmar's Kachin region near the border with China, several years ago and donated it to Capital Normal University's Key Laboratory of Insect Evolution and Environmental Changes in 2016, the authors said. Amber fossils have been some of paleontology's most exciting finds in recent years, but ethical concerns about the provenance of amber from the region have emerged, with some paleontologists calling for a moratorium on research on amber sourced from Myanmar following a 2021 military coup. The 'Cretaceous weirdo' Sirenobethylus charybdis adds to a growing list of insects from that time that 'had adaptations that are outside of the bounds of the critters that are alive today,' said Phil Barden, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who has worked with amber fossils. 'This is significant because there are around a million known insect species — even with all of that living diversity, there are still lots of unexpected surprises in the fossil record that are beyond imagination,' Barden, who was not involved in the study, said via email. However, he said, while plausible, the flytrap hypothesis is 'a bit speculative.' 'There appears to be clear evidence that the abdominal components would have had range of motion. There are also a number of setae, or hairs, that look to be in the right position to detect hosts and potentially immobilize them,' Barden said. He said it is possible the biological structures might have had another purpose such as detecting prey in soil or perhaps even for transporting baby wasps. 'Today, thousands of parasitoid wasp species are capable of immobilizing hosts without abdominal clasping. Why were these wasps unable to simply rely on their stings or incorporate their mouthparts into host capture as living species do?' Barden asked. Vilhelmsen said a key factor in his colleagues' interpretation of the fossil was the location of the wasp's egg-laying organ — right next to the trap-like structure. However, all the Sirenobethylus charybdis specimens examined so far are female wasps, and so the researchers weren't able to rule out that the structure could have played a role during mating, according to the study. 'This is something unique, something I never expected to see, and something I couldn't even imagine would be found,' Vilhelmsen said. 'It's a 10 out of 10.'
