The name "stylops", used without a capital "s", refers as a common name to any member of the order Strepsiptera, and not only the genus Stylops.
Description
Males are 2–3mm long and black with white wings. Females have no limbs and are only seen from their head and thorax poking out of the host bee. Larvae are triungulin. Stylops males are special since their front wings have been modified into halteres, unlike in dipterans, where their back wings are halteres.
Life cycle
Stylops larvae emerge from their host bee while the host gathers pollen from flowers. The larvae then attach to other bees in order to be carried back to the nest. At the nest, the Stylops larvae enter the bodies of bee larvae and develop along with their host. Adult males leave their hosts to mate with females, who remain inside their host and hatch their eggs there.
↑Kirby W (1802) Monographia apum Angliæ; or, An attempt to divide into their natural genera and families, such species of the Linnean genus Apis as have been discovered in England; with descriptions and observations. To which are prefixed some introductory remarks upon the class Hymenoptera, and a synoptical table of the nomenclature of the external parts of these insects. J. Raw, Ipswich, London. Vol. 2: 258 pp.
↑Merriam-Webster: stylops broadly: an insect of the order Strepsiptera |
