[Rearview] Wanted! The Komodo Dragon of Wasps

DAVIS, Calif — A warrior wasp? A wasp with jaws longer than its front legs? The new species of wasp that Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, has scientists abuzz.

The jaw-dropping, shiny black wasp appears to be the “Komodo dragon” of the wasp family.

It’s huge. The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. “Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs. I don’t know how it can walk. The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae.”

Kimsey discovered the warrior wasp on the Mekongga Mountains in southeastern Sulawesi on a recent biodiversity expedition funded by a five-year grant from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program.
 

Left: Male warrior wasp. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey, UC Davis Department of Entomology) Right:  A side view of this new wasp, which some have referred to as the “Komodo dragon” of the wasp family. (Photo by Andrew Richards, Bohart Museum of Entomology)

The insect-eating predator belongs to the genus Dalara and family Crabronidae. “I’m going to name it Garuda, after the national symbol of Indonesia,” Kimsey said. Garuda, a powerful mythical warrior that’s part human and part eagle, boasts a large wingspan, martial prowess and breakneck speed.

“The first time I saw the wasp I knew it was something really unusual,” said Kimsey, a noted wasp expert who oversees the Bohart Museum’s global collection of seven million insect specimens, including 500,000 wasps. “I’m very familiar with members of the wasp family Crabronidae that it belongs to but had never seen anything like this species of Dalara. We don’t know anything about the biology of these wasps. They are only known from southwestern Sulawesi.”

Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, with a male warrior wasp. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey, UC Davis Department of Entomology)

The large jaws probably play a role in defense and reproduction, she said. “In another species in the genus the males hang out in the nest entrance. This serves to protect the nest from parasites and nest robbing, and for this he exacts payment from the female by mating with her every time she returns to the nest. So it’s a way of guaranteeing paternity. Additionally, the jaws are big enough to wrap around the female’s thorax and hold her during mating.”

In her entire career as an entomologist, she’s discovered close to 300 new species. But on three trips to Sulawesi, she’s brought back to the Bohart Museum “hundreds, maybe thousands of new species. It will take years, maybe generations, to go through them all.”

Kimsey added that she considers Sulawesi one of the world’s top three islands for biodiversity, along with Australia and Madagascar.