Stinging Embrace

by AnnaJo Vahle

Title

Stinging Embrace

Artist

AnnaJo Vahle

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

While I was painting en plein air today on north Merritt Island, Florida, I heard a loud noise. It sounded like the buzz of a cicada. I looked up from my painting to watch as huge two inch long wasp with a even bigger cicada landed by my feet. I watched for a moment as I tried to figure out what I was seeing. I put down my paint brush and picked up my camera. This is what I witnessed for several minutes. A wasp was stinging the cicada!

Once home, I looked up online about what I had seen. I found this article posted by Marten Edwards.

Like carpenter bees and mason bees, cicada killer wasps do not live in hives. Females build underground burrows up to three feet long and two feet deep. They provision their larvae in these nests with paralyzed cicadas. The females lay a single egg on one or more paralyzed cicadas, which are then eaten by the cicada wasp larva. The larva then turns into a pupa, spending the winter and spring underground before coming out the next year. We can start to expect seeing cicada killer wasps begin to appear in mid July, around the time that we hear our annual cicadas starting to sing. They typically finish their work by the end of August or early September.

For a cicada, the original sting which knocks out their nervous system is probably more pleasant than being eaten alive. From the wasp’s perspective, fresher is always better, so they have evolved to paralyze their cicadas rather than killing them outright. In a blatantly sexist way, cicada killer wasps provide their daughters with two or three cicadas, while their sons only get one! This is one reason why adult female cicada killer wasps are about twice the size of males. Females are impressive power-lifters, capable of flying around with cicadas that may exceed their own body weight.

Uploaded

August 8th, 2013

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