[HELICONIUS] Heliconius parasitoids

[James Mallet]

Catalina,

I assume you are mainly interested in egg parasitoids.

The only person I know who made any serious collections was Jack Longino 
<longinoj at evergreen.edu> and http://academic.evergreen.edu/projects/ants/ 
when at University of Texas. He now mostly works on ants, but he collected 
widely in the 1980s, and worked on a fascinating Heliconius project which 
sadly was not published.

There were definitely Trichogramma (approx 7-15 or so wasps hatched out of 
each butterfly egg, usually mainly females with only 1 male) which were 
more common in solitary larvae, and also at least one other wasp genus in 
the eggs that laid one to a Heliconius egg, which seemed especially common 
in gregarious larvae like those of H. sara and H. hewitsoni.  I am not sure 
he identified them to species (or even if that is possible), but he 
probably still has the collections he made in Costa Rica, Guyana, Florida, 
Mexico etc.  I had a few too, but I think I have given them mostly to the 
Natural History Museum here in London so they are probably mainly lost in 
that huge collection somewhere now!  I may have some spirit collections 
still.  Larry Gilbert may also have some in Texas.

Jim


>From: Catalina Estrada <estradac at mail.utexas.edu>
>To: heliconius at ucl.ac.uk
>
>I am starting a project together with Ties Huigens and Nina Fatourus to
>study exploitation of intraspecific signals by egg parasitoids in
>Heliconius.   ...
>
>An important part of this project is having a good understanding of the
>comunity of parasitoids attacking Heliconius and their impact on natural
>populations. ...  I would really appreciate if you contact me if you have
>collected data (e.g. rates of parasitism) or accidentally come across
>parasitoids in Heliconius, have specimens we can borrow, or can direct
>me to find people or data bases with  information.


James Mallet
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/taxome/jim/