Comments on: Imagining My Homicidal Liver

By: Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:49:38 +0000

They kill the males, not the females. Even though they originate from the same egg, their pattern of gene expression is different, producing different sexes. Presumably the soldiers can smell the difference.

By: Zephyr L.C.

Zephyr L.C. — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:21:37 +0000

“A single egg… gives rise to thousands of genetically identical siblings.”
“The soldiers benefit their siblings by killing–either killing competitors or even killing other siblings.”

How can warriors tell other siblings apart if all of them form a single clone?

By: Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:18:08 +0000

Bob [7]: What are you referring to when you say “Parasite Flies”? If you’re referring to the category header for this post, please look again: it’s Files, not Flies.

I’m aware that Ichneumonidae are only one group of parasitoid wasps, which is why I used the term “one group of them.”

Thank you for the other taxonomic information.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:30:41 +0000

Sorry, but I can’t help myself:

Parasite Flies should be Parasitoid Hymenoptera, flies are a different order.

The wasps you refer to are not in Ichneumonidae. Ichneumonidae have other cool evolutionary stories, like the viruses that inject their host with to surpress immune responses.

The picture and Copidosoma floridanum are Encyrtidae, which are Chalcidoidea wasps.

The cockroach parasitoids are Ampulicidae, which a more closely related to thread-waisted wasps and bees than to the group normal considered to be the parasitoid hymenoptera (i.e. mircohymenoptera)

By: Andrew Derksen

Andrew Derksen — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:47:50 +0000

For the truly curious, and for those who happen to be in town, Dr. Strand is currently scheduled to give a talk entitled "Polydnaviruses: symbionts and potent immunosuppressive pathogens of insects." at the University of Florida's department of Entomology and Nematology in Gainesville on October 18th at 3pm.

By: Marco

Marco — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:04:30 +0000

Carl, will you please, PLEASE, put all the binomial terms in italic, as should always be done. Just kidding. I really enjoy your pieces, and I deeply envy you. In my magazine, I can write just of furry and cuddly animals. When I got the chance of writing something on inverts, they MUST be beautiful (caterpillar and the like). All the other ones are simply ugly and not worth bothering with.
Bye

By: Jim Lemire

Jim Lemire — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:06:33 +0000

what a coincidence - I recently posted something about a personal experience with parasitoids in my own vegetable garden. Even when gruesome, the wonders of biology are incredibly cool.

By: lylebot

lylebot — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:58:36 +0000

Nice article. But… a web page that contains links to other web pages is now considered “Web 2.0-ish”? Isn’t that what the Web was about from the beginning? Seems to me the NY Times is finally catching up to Web 1.0…

By: George

George — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:42:16 +0000

Not specific to this post, but the page does not display properly. It is quite messed up with the posts far down the page at the bottom?

By: RPM

RPM — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:35:58 +0000

[For those interested in all things Web 2.0-ish, I'm pleased to say that this is the first article I've written for the Times that includes a couple links to relevant scientific papers. It's downright bloggy.] It's too bad one of those links is not formatted correctly. The link to the article from the Journal of Evolutionary Biology should be this. Otherwise, cool stuff. It would also be helpful if the cited papers were listed at the end of the article, for easy perusing.