Copidosoma floridanum
| Copidosoma floridanum | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Encyrtidae |
| Genus: | Copidosoma |
| Species: | C. floridanum |
| Binomial name | |
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Copidosoma floridanum Ashmead, 1900 |
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| Synonyms | |
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Copidosoma floridanum is a species of wasp in the family Encyrtidae and is primarily a parasitoid of moths in the subfamily Plusiinae. It has the largest recorded brood of any parasitoidal insect, at 3,055 individuals. The life cycle begins when a female oviposits into the eggs of a suitable host species, laying one or two eggs per host. Each egg divides repeatedly and develops into a brood of multiple individuals, a phenomenon called polyembryony. The larvae grow inside their host, breaking free at the end of the host's own larval stage.
A cosmopolitan species, Copidosoma floridanum is distributed worldwide. Because of its significance to agriculture as pest control and its phylogenic relationship with other important species, the wasp's genome is being sequenced by the Human Genome Sequencing Center as part of the i5K project, which aims to sequence the genomes of 5,000 arthropods.
As a putatively eusocial species, C. floridanum embodies only two of the four behavioral characteristics that characterize genuine eusociality: larvae live in groups, and there is reproductive division of labor, or reproductive altruism. The second characteristic, reproductive altruism, is, in these wasps, manifested as a sterile soldier caste that has the sole purpose of protecting their reproductive clonal siblings throughout their larval stage. Reproductive altruism behavior plays a major role in the survival and reproductive success of C. floridanum. This species displays haplodiploid sex determination, which increases relatedness among females from 0.5 to 0.75 because males develop from unfertilized eggs and are therefore haploid while females develop from normally fertilized eggs and are therefore diploid. So, as a result of eusocial progeny allocation and a distinctive type of clonal development in parasitized hosts, polyembryonic wasps including C. floridanum are able to thrive. Additionally, these wasps modify their caste ratios in response to interspecific competition, creating a trade-off between reproduction and defense, as the wasps adapt to the levels of competition within the group.
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