They lead modest lives among the palo verde, mesquite, and acacia trees throughout the Southwestern U.S., laying their eggs on seed pods and defending the survival of their offspring against the parasitic wasp species that attacks their eggs before their young can develop. They are the seed beetles Mimosestes amicus, living all around us in the trees of Tucson, and yet remaining all but invisible to our eyes – or nearly so. Now, doctoral candidate Joseph Deas in the University of Arizona's Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Entomology and Insect Science, along with his faculty advisor Dr. Martha Hunter in the department of entomology, is peering into their world through his microscope and has discovered something novel: The beetles, whose eggs frequently are parasitized by the wasp Uscana semifumipennis, have a strategy to protect their offspring that goes beyond a helpful habit. "They're stacking their eggs in order to protect them from these parasitic wasps," said Deas, whose research was published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on September 14, 2011. The wasps, called parasitoids because they kill their host rather than just taking advantage of its resources, deposit their own eggs inside the beetles’ eggs. The wasp larva gets a head start in life and develops before the beetle larva, hijacking the beetle egg yolk for its own nourishment. "You can tell when an egg has been parasitized because the egg will start to darken and blacken," said Deas. "The beetle larva by that time will never form because all of the yolk is going inside the wasp larva. And then you can see little red eyes in there; the beetles don't have red eyes. It looks very evil." As often happens in science, Deas came upon the discovery of M. amicus' strategy through the course of a different investigation.Login Or Register To Read Full Story