Stylops, << STY lops, >> is the name for a group of tiny insects that spend most of their lives inside the bodies of bees or wasps. Biologists call Stylops and other such insects parasites.
Adult male and female Stylops look different. Males have six legs; two short, club-shaped forewings; two large, fan-shaped hindwings; and branching antennae. They also have compound eyes that look like blackberries and consist of many tiny lenses. Adult females resemble the larvae. They never develop eyes, wings, legs, or antennae. Their small, oval bodies project only slightly from between segments in the host insect’s abdomen. Both males and females grow to about 1/6 inch (4 millimeters) long.
Only the adult male Stylops leaves the host. He has about two or three days to find a female and mate with her before he dies. The female attracts him by giving off a perfumelike chemical substance called a pheromone. After mating, females produce thousands of tiny larvae called triungulins. Triungulins have six legs for walking and jumping. These active larvae often climb onto flowers that bees or wasps pollinate. The pollinating insects may unknowingly pick up triungulins and carry them back to their nest. There, the triungulins will use the bee or wasp larvae as hosts.
After locating a host, a triungulin burrows into its body and quickly changes into a wormlike parasite. The Stylops larva then grows over the course of several weeks or months. It eventually pokes part of its body out of the host’s abdomen. Then, without leaving the host, it enters its pupal (inactive) stage and transforms into an adult.
Stylops feed on the body fat and often the reproductive tissues of their hosts. Such feeding can cause nutritional and developmental problems in the hosts. Insects that carry Stylops commonly have damaged reproductive organs. In some cases, a host of one sex may develop features normally associated with members of the opposite sex. Scientists often refer to insects affected by Stylops as having been “stylopized.”
