It's a natural match: Your students, curious about the world around them, and the bizarre, fascinating, and exceedingly classroom friendly organisms called WOWBugs (Fig. 1), which are members of the insect order Hymenoptera, family Eulophidae. Please meet Melittobia digitata, the newestand some say most excitingaddition to studying the life sciences.
WOWBugs are small, harmless, parasitic wasps unable to sting humans. Found around the globe, they've made their way into the classroom via three years of collaborative development by university researchers and over 100 classroom teachers. An array of supportive materials, from videotapes and kits to a detailed manual of classroom-tested activities, has recently become available.
WOWBugs are easy to handle, and no expensive equipment is needed. Students can easily recognize and distinguish WOWBug males from females (Fig. 2). All stages of the life cycle are readily visibletheir eggs are attached to the outside of the host's body, and their pupae (Fig. 3) are naked, lacking any cocoon to cover them.
Biology and Life Cycle
WOWBugs are parasitic powerhouses, capable of living on the young of over 20 other species in at least 4 different insect orders and producing up to 700 offspring in under 3 weeks at normal room temperatures.
Figure 1 Electronmicrograph of female (left) and male (right) WOWBug
Three days after they are laid on the outside of an insect larva or pupa, eggs hatch into voracious larvae that rapidly consume their host. In about 5 more days, larvae begin to pupate. Pupae mature rapidly, progressively darkening as they do (Fig. 3). By 1721 days from the initial encounter of a mated female with a host, new adults emerge: honey-colored, dwarf-winged males with antler-shaped antennae and no compound eyes, followed by jet black, winged females. Males produce an odor or sex pheromone highly attractive to unmated females. In nature, WOWBugs live in highly inbred populations in which small numbers of males cannibalize their brothers and mate with their mother and sisters. Mated females disperse to find new hosts, but the relatively sedentary males die without ever leaving their birth site.
