Nasonia
Encyclopedia
Nasonia are a genus
of small pteromalid
parasitoid
wasp
s that sting and lay eggs in the pupae of various flies. The fly species that Nasonia usually parasitize are primarily blowflies and fleshflies, making Nasonia a useful tool for biocontrol of these pest flies. The wasps are small, pinhead sized, and also referred to as jewel wasps.
The wasp genus has acquired genes from the Pox virus and from Wolbachia
in less than 100,000 years.
There are currently four described species in the Nasonia genus, N. vitripennis, N. longicornis, N. giraulti, and N. oneida. N. vitripennis is found worldwide; N. giraulti is found in eastern North America and N. longicornis is found in western North America.
was announced after work over four years by an international consortium of research groups financed by the National Human Genome Research Institute
. It is expected that the discovery will lead to applications in pest control.
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
of small pteromalid
Pteromalidae
Pteromalidae is a very large family of parasitic wasps, with some 3,450 described species in some 640 genera...
parasitoid
Parasitoid
A parasitoid is an organism that spends a significant portion of its life history attached to or within a single host organism in a relationship that is in essence parasitic; unlike a true parasite, however, it ultimately sterilises or kills, and sometimes consumes, the host...
wasp
Wasp
The term wasp is typically defined as any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitizes it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their...
s that sting and lay eggs in the pupae of various flies. The fly species that Nasonia usually parasitize are primarily blowflies and fleshflies, making Nasonia a useful tool for biocontrol of these pest flies. The wasps are small, pinhead sized, and also referred to as jewel wasps.
The wasp genus has acquired genes from the Pox virus and from Wolbachia
Wolbachia
Wolbachia is a genus of bacteria which infects arthropod species, including a high proportion of insects , as well as some nematodes. It is one of the world's most common parasitic microbes and is possibly the most common reproductive parasite in the biosphere...
in less than 100,000 years.
There are currently four described species in the Nasonia genus, N. vitripennis, N. longicornis, N. giraulti, and N. oneida. N. vitripennis is found worldwide; N. giraulti is found in eastern North America and N. longicornis is found in western North America.
Genomics
In 2010 the Nasonia genomeGenome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
was announced after work over four years by an international consortium of research groups financed by the National Human Genome Research Institute
National Human Genome Research Institute
The National Human Genome Research Institute is a division of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland.NHGRI began as the National Center for Human Genome Research , which was established in 1989 to carry out the role of the NIH in the International Human Genome Project...
. It is expected that the discovery will lead to applications in pest control.