Surreal Trogus Wasp

I was walking along a trail on the El Dorado Reserve in the Santa Marta mountains with two fellow travelers, and for a handful of seconds, I saw this tiny wasp with a vivid reddish-orange body and bright, shimmering sapphire wings. I told my fellows about this wasp—and to keep their eyes out, because it was the most surreal thing I had ever seen in my life.

We then had a long discussion about the fact that there are so many wasp species out there—over a hundred thousand described, and maybe hundreds of thousands left to be described, that we possibly saw something that might never be identified. The Santa Marta mountains, after all, is known to create a level of species diversity unknown almost anywhere else in the world.

We then started to talk about whether it would be possible to photograph such an insect—to be able to show that this was a real thing: coral reef colors on land. I told my friends that to be able to photograph such a creature, you would have to set up the conditions in a staged setting. There is no way to be able to focus on such a fast, ethereal animal in the low light levels of the montane forest. A terrarium with studio lighting would be an absolute requirement.

We continued to talk about the wasp, and my desire for my friends to see the same animal. As we were leaving the mountains, I was walking by myself down another steep trail. An orange and blue wasp appeared! I was carrying a garden knee-pad in one hand, and my macro setup in the other hand. I threw the pad on the rocky ground and had about 15 seconds before the wasp disappeared.

I was able to identify this wasp as an ichneumon wasp. Ichneumonidae is one of the largest families in the animal kingdom, with more than 25,000 described species and likely many more waiting to be named. Ichneumon wasps are parasitoids: the female lays her eggs in or on another insect, and her larvae feed on it, usually from the inside. But I was also able to identify the animal to its genus. It is a Trogus wasp, a small genus of about a dozen known species, all of which specialize in swallowtail butterflies. A female lays a single egg in a swallowtail caterpillar. The wasp larva grows inside its host as the caterpillar turns into a chrysalis, and it is the wasp, not the butterfly, that eventually emerges. This one may be Trogus vulpinus or Trogus pennator. But it’s also completely possible this is some unknown wasp; just another species waiting to be described.