Tachytes

Some species of Sphegidea (wasp-like insects) are likewise parasitic; and M. Fabre has lately shown good reason for believing that, although the Tachytes nigra generally makes its own burrow and stores it with paralysed prey for its own larvæ, yet that, when this insect finds a burrow already made and stored by another species, it takes advantage of the prize and becomes for the occasion parasitic.

VIII. Instinct. Special Instincts 1909

Instead of living on the honey of a Bee, it feeds on the skewerful of Mantes provided by a Tachytes.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Schreber's Cerocoma as a parasite of _Tachytes tarsina_, who buries her hoards of young Locusts in the high sandy banks.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

On the 16th of July, 1883, I was digging, with my son Émile, in the sandy heap where, a few days earlier, I had been observing the labours and the surgery of the Mantis-killing Tachytes.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

This last date is best-suited to explain the presence of the parasitic larva and its pseudochrysalis in the Tachytes 'burrows from July onwards.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

I imagine that, in the burrows of the Tachytes, the grub, when its heap of Mantes is consumed, moves from cell to cell until it has satisfied its appetite.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Let us also record the description of the strange larva found devouring the heap of Mantes in the burrows of the Tachytes.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

From it emerges the tertiary larva, which, from a simple examination with the pocket-lens, appears to me, in its general features, identical with the secondary larva, the one which eats the Tachytes 'provisions.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

More often still, we unearthed larvæ which were busy eating the Mantes, the rations of the Tachytes.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

By eliminating what was known to me and seeking among the Meloidæ of my neighbourhood for the size that corresponded with the pseudochrysalids unearthed from the Tachytes 'burrows, I found, as I have said, only Schaeffer's Cerocoma and the

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Jean-Henri Fabre 1869