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Animalia >Arthropoda >Insecta >Hymenoptera >Pelirampidae >Perilampus >

Insects are well known to perpetually clean their body off dusts and fungus spores. The typical example is a house fly, whose cleaning behavior was described in a haiku poem. Parasitic wasps clean their body as actively as other insects. They clean all over the body from wings, to legs, and to head, and most of their leg hairs are shaped to suit for cleaning small ditches and hairs on the body surface. The parasitic wasp in this video parasitizes another species of parasitic wasps Torymus sinensis and shows an "ultra C" cleaning behavior. When insects do not clean themselves, fungus spores often cause fatal illness to the insects. Common victims of fungus infection such as scale insects and caterpillars are not capable of cleaning their body. Even insects such as flies and leafhoppers that show frequent cleaning behaviors are often infected with parasitic fungi. They seem to be susceptible to fungus species that have strongly adhesive spores. One glance tells you that the water stick-insects are also good cleaners

(Data No.momo041231ps01b)

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