The emerald cuckoo wasp is a large cuckoo wasp that shines metallic blue-green to violet. It lays its eggs in other wasps' mud nests, and its larvae eat the food the host stocked for its own young. It lives in warm parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, and has been reported only once in the US, in Texas in 2023.
Appearance
- Appearance
- About ½–¾ in (12–20 mm) long, which is large for a cuckoo wasp. Most are blue-green to blue-violet, but colors range all the way to coppery red. The shine is structural color, made by the fine structure of the body surface reflecting light.
Look-alikes
This glossy metallic-green bee has lived in South Florida since 2003, while the emerald cuckoo wasp is an Old World species that is hardly ever reported in the US. The orchid bee has a very long tongue, and females carry pollen baskets on their hind legs.
Why they get mixed upBoth are shiny metallic-green insects about half an inch long.
Where it lives
- Range
- Southern Europe, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, and Australia. It is an Old World species; the only US report is a single sighting in Texas in 2023.
Behavior
- Activity
- When threatened, it curls its abdomen under its body and rolls into a ball. Cuckoo wasps have no sting; the female's egg-laying tube folds away inside the abdomen.
Life cycle
- Larva
- The larva feeds on the caterpillars and other prey the host wasp packed into its nest cell.
- Caterpillar food plants
- Instead of plants, it depends on host nests: recorded hosts include potter wasps, mud daubers (genus Sceliphron), and leafcutter bees.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- NENot EvaluatedNot yet assessed
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