thumb|Mating pair
Velvet ants (Mutillidae) are a family of more than 7,000 species of wasps whose wingless females resemble large, hairy ants. Their common name velvet ant refers to their resemblance to an ant, and their dense pile of hair, which most often is bright scarlet or orange, but may also be black, white, silver, or gold. Their bright colors serve as aposematic signals. They are known for their extremely painful sting (the sting of the species Dasymutilla klugii rated a 3 on the Schmidt pain index and lasts up to 30 minutes However, mutillids are not aggressive and sting only in defense. In addition, the actual toxicity of their venom is much lower than that of honey bees or harvester ants. Through the evolution of aposematic traits in velvet ant species in the same ring, local predators have learned to avoid these well-defended wasps.
Description
The exoskeleton of all velvet ants is unusually tough (to the point that some entomologists have reported difficulty piercing them with steel pins when attempting to mount them for display in cabinets).This characteristic allows them to successfully invade the nests of their prey and also helps them retain moisture. Mutillids exhibit extreme sexual dimorphism. As in some related families in the Vespoidea, males have wings, but females are wingless. The males and females are so distinct in their morphology that entomologists often find it very hard to determine whether a given male and female belong to the same species, unless they are captured while mating. According to one researcher, the painfulness of the sting of Dasymutilla klugii outscored 58 other species of stinging insects tested; the only species this researcher rated as having a more painful sting were Paraponera clavata (bullet ant), Synoeca septentrionalis (warrior wasp), and Pepsis and Hemipepsis spp. (tarantula hawks).
Life cycle
left|thumb|thumbtime=1:47|A female of Nemka viduata viduata (Pallas, 1773) looks for a nest of Bembix oculata to deposit her eggs.
Male mutillids fly in search of females; after mating, the female enters a host insect nest, typically a ground-nesting bee or wasp burrow, and deposits one egg near each larva or pupa. Only a few species are known to parasitize other types of hosts; exceptions include the European velvet ant, Mutilla europaea, one of the only species that attacks social bees (e.g., Bombus), and the genus Pappognatha, whose hosts are tree-dwelling orchid bees. The mutillid larvae then develop as idiobiont ectoparasitoids, eventually killing their immobile larval/pupal hosts within a week or two. Velvet ants exhibit haplodiploid sex determination, as do other members of the superfamily Vespoidea.
Taxonomy
Recent classifications of Vespoidea sensu lato (beginning in 2008) concluded that the family Mutillidae contained one subfamily that was unrelated to the remainder, and this subfamily was removed to form a separate family Myrmosidae.
thumb|centre|800px|Proposed higher classification of Mutillidae
See also
- List of Mutillidae genera
References
Sources
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