If you are intimate with the Harry Potter series , you believably think back thedementors : dark , spook - like existence that suck every plus tone away leaving nothing but an empty cuticle . These awful creatures have now made the changeover from phantasy to scientific literature , as they are now the namesake of a newly reveal species of cockroach wasp . The nameAmpulex dementorwas chosen through public voting and has been described by Stefanie Krause and her squad at the Natural History Museum in Berlin . The paper has been published inPLOS ONE .
The wasp , aboriginal to Thailand , has bright flushed and inglorious coloring . It is one of over 200 species of wasp which reproduce by way of a boniface incubator and this species choose cockroaches . The female lands on top of a roach and using its cut to inject neurotoxins directly into the roach ’s head . The roach immediately takes on a living dead - corresponding obedient state , following the wasp back to her tunnel . There , she lays her egg inside the cockroach . The roach incubates the egg for a few days until it hatches . The larva then feeds on the rope until it is honest-to-goodness enough to go off on its own .
With a replication strategy like that , it is no wonder thatA. dementorwas chosen by museum visitor . Here were the pick for the elector , as written in the newspaper :
A. dementor:“The specie name refers to the dementors , which are fabricated characters appearing in Harry Potter books . Dementors are magical beingness , which can down a person ’s soul , go out their victims as an empty but operative body without personality or emotions . The name is an allusion to the docility of the paralytic roach . ”
A. mon : “ The Mon multitude are one of the earliest jazz ethnic groups in Thailand . The name is an allusion to the geographic source of the wasp from Thailand . ”
A. bicolor:“Derived from the Latin bismuth = two and color = color ; an allusion to the distinctive , black - violent coloration of the wasp . ”
A. plagiator : “ The new mintage is an ant - mimic : It tries to imitate ants in its general appearance as well as in its way of moving . One can say that the wasp is a plagiarist of the ant , and who is not reminded of current plagiarisms … ? ”
Do the tactics of this wasp sound intimate ? Many other species of wasp use other worm to cover / feed their untested . We have already introduced you to some which usetarantulasorcaterpillars . Also , this is n’t the only wight with a name derived from pop culture . The science of naming organism has been antecedently discourse on IFLScience : once withgenesand once withorganisms .
[ chapeau tip : Shreya Dasgupta , Mongabay ]
