Anaphes nitens facts for kids

Anaphes nitens is a tiny insect, a type of fairyfly or chalcid wasp. It belongs to the family Mymaridae. This wasp comes from Australia. It's special because it helps control a bug called the gum tree snout beetle. The wasp does this by laying its eggs inside the beetle's eggs. This is a way of using nature to fight pests, called biological control.

Meet the Anaphes nitens Wasp

This little wasp is super tiny! It's usually less than one millimetre (0.04 in) long. That's smaller than a grain of rice!

Like other wasps in its group, it has long, thin back wings. Both sets of its wings have short hairs along the edges. Its head and body are black. Its legs are a yellowish-brown color, and its wings have a light brown tint.

How Anaphes nitens Helps Nature

Anaphes nitens is originally from southeastern Australia. Adult wasps drink sweet liquids like nectar from flowers and honeydew. But their babies, called larvae, are meat-eaters. They eat the eggs of the gum tree snout beetle.

The Gum Tree Snout Beetle Problem

The gum tree snout beetle and its larvae love to eat young leaves, buds, and shoots from Eucalyptus trees. When they eat too much, the trees grow slower. Their branches can twist, and sometimes parts of the tree even die.

Female snout beetles lay their eggs in groups of about ten. These eggs are inside hard capsules. This is where the Anaphes nitens wasp comes in!

Wasp to the Rescue!

The female Anaphes nitens wasp lays her own eggs inside the snout beetle's egg capsules. When the wasp larvae hatch, they eat the beetle eggs inside the capsule. This stops the beetle eggs from hatching into harmful larvae.

Helping Trees Around the World

Eucalyptus trees are now grown in many countries. The gum tree snout beetle has sometimes traveled with the trees by accident. This beetle can cause a lot of damage to Eucalyptus farms in new places.

For example, in South Africa, A. nitens was brought in to help control this beetle. It has also been used successfully in Spain. In Spain, the snout beetle lays eggs mainly in April, July, and November. The eggs laid in April are most often attacked by the wasps.

The wasp larvae can even go into a special resting state called diapause during winter. This happens when they are inside the November eggs. This allows the wasps to survive cold weather that would be too harsh for adult wasps.