Fig wasp
The fig wasp is a tiny wasp, only about 2 millimetres long. It has a very special friendship with the fig tree. The fig is its nursery, and in return the little wasp carries pollen from fig to fig so new seeds can grow.
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Fun facts
The males have no wings at all. They spend their whole life inside the fig where they hatched.
When a female squeezes into a fig through its tiny opening, her wings and feelers break off.
A grown-up fig wasp lives only a few days or at most a couple of weeks.
It finds the right kind of fig by its smell.
Figs on female fig trees are a trap. The wasp cannot lay eggs there, but it still pollinates the flowers.
Most asked questions about Fig wasp
?What is a fig wasp?
It is a tiny wasp that lays its eggs inside figs and carries pollen from one fig to another, which helps the fig tree make seeds.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Blastophaga psenes
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Agaonidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Agaonidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Blastophaga psenes (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Rehberger S, Vogel J, Müller B, Vasilita C, Krogmann L, Schmidt S, Peters RS (2024). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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