Dr

August 24, 2016

Dr. Kal Ivanov, assistant curator of recent invertebrates, found this male black widow spider with a tiny larva attached to it. He is keeping it alive in hopes of rearing the larva. Since Sunday, it appears to have doubled in size. Various wasps will sting a spider before depositing an egg, and the resulting larva feeds as an ectoparasite (parasitizing from the outside) on the paralyzed but still living host spider. We watched as the digestive system worked to pump fluids out of the doomed host...