Spotted what I thought was a rather stupid small Ichneumon wasp walking about just underneath the orbweb of an Araniella sp. spider. Took a couple of low power shots and then just as I was changing the magnification on the lens, there was a flurry of activity which I only managed to capture one half decent shot of, before the wasp flew off and the spider did an emergency bail out and ended up several inches below the web on an emergency thread.

I initially thought ok the spider missed the wasp but looking at #2 the wasp actually looks like it's in an egg laying postion and there is a "tube" near the spider. I suspect in fact the wasp may be one of the polysphinctus sp. wasps that actually lay an egg externally on araniella sp spiders. Last shot is an old shot of one of these spiders caryying the external parasite larva.

Brian V.

Good capture, pun intended. That last is intereting, That seems to be a fairly large parasite on that spider.
Douglas

wow! cool captures brian.

The photography and the information are very enjoyable.

Great series Brian. I have never witnessed this behavior,so very interesting.

Birdie

Thanks all for the comments
info from the experts suggests it is not a polysphinctus wasp but a braconid wasp that was just defending itself when the spider attacked. So it was just a stupid wasp
Brian v.