JUN 27 1917 ; 
Ce teh once scoot 
mY ON TAN Dis ¢ 
VOL. XXIV JUNE, 1917 No. 3 
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THE HABIT OF LEAF-OVIPOSITION AMONG THE 
PARASITIC HYMENOPTERA! 
By Harry Scorr Smirn. 
Entomologists have for some time been more or less familiar 
with the strange habit of leaf-oviposition in the parasitic dipterous 
family Tachinide. ‘Twenty-nine years ago Dr. C. Sasaki of the 
Imperial University of Japan? made the interesting discovery that 
the so-called Ugi parasite of the silkworm (Crossocosmia sericarie 
Corm.) deposits its eggs not within or upon its host, as was the 
habit of all other known parasites, but upon the leaves of the food 
plant of its host, 7. e., the mulberry tree. These eggs were minute 
and very numerous and were taken into the alimentary canal of 
the silkworm along with the mulberry leaves upon which it fed. 
Later, in 1908, Mr. O. H. Swezey*® found the same curious habit 
to occur in the life-history of the Tachinid Chetogedia monticola 
Bigot, a parasite of various lepidopterous insects in the Hawaiian 
Islands. During the same year Mr. C. H. T. Townsend! of the U. S. 
Bureau of Entomology recorded this curious habit in the Tachinid 
Blepharipa scutellata R. D., introduced into New England from Eu- 
rope as an aid to the suppression of the Gypsy Moth, and in Pales 
pavida Meigen, introduced for the same purpose. Mr. Townsend 
also mentioned several other species which he suspected to have 
the leaf-oviposition habit. Another curious deviation from the 
regular methods of reproduction Mr. Townsend found to occur in 
Eupeleteria magnicornis Zetterstedt, and Zygobothria nidicola 
Townsend, these flies depositing living maggots on the leaves upon 
1 Occasional Contributions from the Cal. State Insectary, No. 5. 
* Sasaki, C., On the Life-history of Ugimya sericaria Rondani. Journ. Coll. Sci. Imp. Univ. 
Japan, Vol. I, pp. 1-39, 1887. 
3 Swezey, O. H., Observations of the Life-history of Chatogadia monticola Bigot. Proc. 
Hawaiian Ent. Soc., II, pp. 1-35, 1908. 
4 Townsend, C. H. T., A Record of Results from Rearings and Dissections of Tachinide. 
Bull. U. 8. Dept. Agric., Bur. Ent., Tech. Ser., No. 12, pp. 93-118, 1908. 
