parasitized hornworm

Summer…tomatoes…hornworms… It seems like you can’t have one with­out the others.

tobacco-hornworm-parasitized-by-wasps

Jenny, friend of the blog, over on the other coast, sent me this photo from her gar­den, a tobacco horn­worm that has been par­a­sitized by a wasp.

Here’s an almost perky descrip­tion of what’s hap­pen­ing, cour­tesy the Clem­son Uni­ver­sity Depart­ment of Ento­mol­ogy, Soils & Plant Sci­ences page. You can prac­ti­cally hear the ento­mol­o­gists spin­ning their LPs with bub­bly 1950s pizzi­cato string music in the background:

The adult wasp inserts its eggs beneath the skin of the horn­worm larva. The eggs hatch and the young bra­conids feed on the vis­cera of the horn­worm until they pupate… This par­a­site is an impor­tant fac­tor in con­trol of horn­worms and is most ben­e­fi­cial (my italics).


cherokee-purple-tomatoes

I do get pro­tec­tive of my toma­toes, espe­cially early in the sea­son. But learn­ing the details of bio­log­i­cal con­trols some­times gives me the creeps.

Any empa­thy for the evil horn­worm out there? No? Oh well. I thought I’d try…

June 29 2009 | Categories: gardening | Tags: • • | 7 Comments »