Horseshoe bees are a type of parasitic wasp that is thought to parasitize the eggs of stick insects, and they have a mysterious robot-like appearance.Its species diversity and life history are shrouded in mystery, and even now, nearly 150 years after its discovery, no one has succeeded in observing its ecology.

　Here, the researchers collected in Vietnam to investigate bees parasitic on stick insect eggs, and found that many undescribed species were included in the samples of the genus Bee.As a result of classifying them based on morphological characteristics, 16 species were found to be new species.

　Until now, there were only 51 known species of the genus Beetle in the world, but this research increased the total to 67 species, which means that the number of species has increased by more than 3%.Although horseshoe wasps were considered to be rare parasitic wasps, it is expected that they may be parasitic wasps with a much higher population and greater species diversity than is currently understood.

　In addition, when females of a new species named Loboscelidia squamosa were fed stick insect eggs and observed, the females were observed to dig burrows in the ground with their heads to hide the eggs of host stick insects.The research group believes that this egg-laying behavior is closer to the nest-building habits of hunter wasps than parasitic wasps.As a result, a series of parasitic behaviors that had been shrouded in mystery for nearly 150 years became clear for the first time in the world.

　The results of this research are expected to advance research on the morphological diversity and life history of horseshoe bees, and provide hints for unraveling the evolution of egg-laying behavior of bees and the mystery of their mysterious morphology.

Paper information:[European Journal of Taxonomy] Taxonomic revision of the genus Loboscelidia Westwood, 1874 (Hymenoptera: Chrysididae: Loboscelidiinae) from Vietnam