The perfect wasp

Author Gary Taylor ◦

The perfect wasp.

So after first spotting this gorgeous little creature, not knowing what it was but seriously disappointed at not getting a pic, 🙁 despite the wind and cloud, I drove the 130 Km ’round trip out for another go… Couldn’t believe it when, in this vast area of native bushland, I actually spotted it again… only got one pic, but was pretty stoked… 😃 Then Ken ID’ed it as a rare “pollen wasp” (most likely in the Metaparagia genus of the family Masarinae), that actually provision their young one’s cells with pollen, like bees do, rather than with spiders and caterpillars like a lot of wasps… and I was back to being disappointed at not getting more pics… 😭😆 So, with thunderstorms and rain approaching (and forecast for the whole week), I had one more go…

Woohoo! Jackpot! Ok, so first up, I don’t know if I just happened to catch them during a midday siesta (temp had just peaked at 36 degrees, cloud rolling in), or if they just found it too hard to fly in the howling nor-wester but most of them just seemed to be “roosting” on thin wavy stems… Made it easy to spot them, less so to photograph… 😄 But after two hours and 200 deleted pics, I managed a to get a couple of ok shots 😅

So why “The perfect wasp”? Righto, so as much as I love and respect all living things, one of the reasons I like native bees so much, apart from their incredible beauty and diversity, is that of all the animals on earth, they are one of the few (with the exception of cuckoo bees) that do nothing but good for the planet… Butterflies are beautiful, but their babies eat the poor little plants trying to grow, wasps are good for us, they eat the caterpillars that eat our poor little plants, not so good for the poor little caterpillar tho’… So, a beautiful, totally shy and unaggressive little wasp that, like a native bee, only wants to be left alone to raise it’s family on the gifts of nature’s flowers, hurting no other living creature, in my opinion has to be the perfect wasp… 🙂

1st and 2nd pics (left side) taken on the Canon, 100mm macro lens. 3rd, 4th and 5th, Olympus TG6.

Geraldton-ish, Midwest WA © Gary Taylor

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Ken Walker
The “Perfect Wasp” indeed. Thanks for your efforts and images – My cup runneth over. I can think of a few more “Perfect Wasps”. For example, Agaonidae or fig wasps. The fig flower gets it all wrong as it’s flowers open on the inside of the fig fruit. So how it is supposed to get pollinated? Fig wasps do the job. The female pushes her way inside the fruit and lays eggs inside a number of flowers but not all. As she walks around inside, she transfer pollen from flower to flower and then dies inside the fruit. So, the next time you “crush” down on a fig, you are probably eating Agaonidae wasps.

Gary Taylor
Thanks Ken… Cool, my dad taught us as kids to always break a fig in half and check inside before eating it, and many times I’ve found little “maggots” and “things” crawling around… I wonder now if that’s what we were seeing?… Arrghh, now I want to find a fig tree… 😂

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• Scientific classification
• Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Arthropoda
• Subphylum: Hexapoda
• Class: Insecta
• Informal: Pterygotes
• Order: Hymenoptera
• Superfamily: Vespoidea
• Family: Vespidae
• Subfamily: Masarinae
• Genus: Metaparagia

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