{"id":4216,"date":"2018-09-16T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T00:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=4216"},"modified":"2018-09-16T00:01:10","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T00:01:10","slug":"sex-lies-and-grappling-hooks-meet-the-parasitic-blister-beetle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/16\/sex-lies-and-grappling-hooks-meet-the-parasitic-blister-beetle\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex, Lies, and Grappling Hooks: Meet the Parasitic Blister Beetle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Imagine going on a first date with someone whose perfume drives you wild. But when you lean in for that first kiss, you realize your suitor is actually nothing more than a writhing mass of parasitic blister\u00a0beetle larvae<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is the plight of the burrowing bee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You see, sometimes when\u00a0a male bee is buzzing<\/a>\u00a0along the sand dunes, he smells what appears to be a female\u2019s pheromones. Mating is highly competitive in these species, so it pays for the male to buzz in and have a look.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Unfortunately for him, blister beetle larvae have evolved the ability to create chemicals that make them smell like a female burrowing bee. The critters even boost the profile of their scent by crawling up a strand of grass and forming a bee-sized ball of\u00a0baby beetles<\/a>. These larvae are known as triungulins, for their feet, which have three claws that resemble grappling hooks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When the male bee attempts to mate with this decoy, the triungulins latch onto him with their hook-like claws and tackle him to the dunes below. Eventually, when the male flies off in search of a real female, he does so with a\u00a0horde of hitchhikers<\/a>\u00a0attached to his fuzzy body. The larvae then latch onto the female and ride her to a burrow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There, she lays a single egg and deposits a ton of\u00a0pollen and nectar<\/a>. But those nutrients may not make it to the baby bee, because the triungulins gobble them up first before transforming into adults.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: <\/span>Sex, Lies, and Grappling Hooks: Meet the Parasitic Blister Beetle<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Imagine going on a first date with someone whose perfume drives you wild. But when you lean in for that first kiss, you realize your suitor is actually nothing more than a writhing mass of parasitic blister\u00a0beetle larvae. This is the plight of the burrowing bee. You see, sometimes when\u00a0a male bee is buzzing\u00a0along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-160","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4217,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216\/revisions\/4217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}