Tachypompilus ferrugineus subsp. bicolor

Tachypompilus ferrugineus bicolor (Banks) DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Independencia Province, Duvergé, Vila Barrancoli; 7 July 2018, 1521 PDT; B. A. Roy. Host: Heteropoda venatoria Linnaeus (Sparassidae), juvenile [det. A. Tosto and R. C. West]. The wasp is grasping the immobilized huntsman spider midway on its right pedipalp with her mandibles, while pulling it backwards, dorsal side upward, vertically up a debarked upright post with a natural cavity part way up. Two other photographs show the spider positioned inside of the cavity, apart from the wasp. It is unknown whether the wasp placed the spider in the cavity in order to rest, after the strenuous prey transport, or whether she put it there in order to lay an egg on its abdomen and conceal it with debris (Roy 2021).Published as part of Kurczewski, Frank E., West, Rick C., Waichert, Cecilia & Pitts, James P., 2022, Additional new and unusual host records for Western Hemisphere spider wasps (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae), pp. 1-32 in Insecta Mundi 2022 (928) on page 16, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.653349