#2 Ruby-tailed Wasp by Andy Millard
Meet Andy Millard, Chair of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union Executive Committee!
Andy Millard has had a career in school teaching and university lecturing and, throughout his life, a broad interest in natural history, where he’s considered himself a ‘Jack of All Trades but Master of None.’ To help rectify the latter situation, since retirement from full-time employment, he’s focused on Bees, Wasps & Ants (aculeates), taking over from Michael Archer as Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union recorder for this group. His active involvement with the YNU started before this, when he began assisting the late Albert Henderson with editing the YNU Bulletin and then, in 2011, joined the Editorial Board for the new format Naturalist. He is currently Chair of the YNU Executive Committee and maintains some educational activities by tutoring on an Open University module in Environmental Science. You can contact Andy at: editor@ynu.org.uk, and find out more about the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union here.
Chrysis corusca (length approx. 8mm) (c) Franco Zicchieri.
Andy’s chosen species is Chrysis corusca, one of our elusive and beautiful aculeate species. Belonging to a group known as Ruby-tailed Wasps, these small, very colourful insects have a metallic finish with mixes of blues, greens, reds and golds, resulting in them sometimes being called Jewel Wasps. Chrysis corusca has only recently been recorded in the UK with just four records: Berkshire, Surrey, Rutland and, in 2016, North Yorkshire. Its main distribution is in northern Europe, particularly countries around the southern Baltic Sea. In view of the small number of UK records it does not yet have an extensive profile on the NBN Atlas.
Andy chose this species for several reasons. He encountered it at an early stage in his aculeate recording, shortly after retirement from full-time employment, and was taken by its startling colours. While attending only his second AGM of the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society he had the sample he had collected identified by a chrysid expert, Bogdan Wisniowski… and learnt that his was then only the third record for the UK!
Whilst beautiful in appearance, their life cycle is not so attractive, lending this group the alternate name of the Cuckoo Wasps. As their name indicates, they parasitise other species of insect, either by stealing food from the host larva (kleptoparasitism) or laying eggs by or on the host larva so that the Cuckoo Wasp larva feeds off the host insect, eventually killing it. In the case of the subfamily Chrysidinae, to which C. corusca belongs, the hosts are solitary wasps and bees. With only 4 records in the UK, little is known of the biology of C. corusca but in the Nordic countries surrounding the Baltic its main host appears to be the solitary wasp Symmorphus gracilis, which is also widespread in England and Wales as far north as North Yorkshire.
“Whilst beautiful in appearance, their life cycle is not so attractive, lending them their other name of the Cuckoo Wasps”
The Yorkshire significance of C. corusca is not only that currently it’s the most northerly UK record for the species, but also that it was found within an innovative community-based habitat creation project south of York. Three Hagges Woodmeadow is an inspirational initiative that began in 2012, to convert an arable field into a rich and diverse habitat of woodland and meadow, for the benefit of both biodiversity and community. The biodiversity of Three Hagges Woodmeadow has been closely monitored throughout its development and Andrew Grayson, an invertebrate consultant and member of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union has, so far, recorded over 1200 species of invertebrate on the site. Andy mentions that part of his interest in the species was also sparked by the location in which he found it. NEYEDC have been involved with this site for a number of years, using drone technology to map the changing habitat and contribute to its monitoring.
Three Hagges Woodmeadow, during an NEYEDC drone-mapping session in July 2021.
More than 2500 species of Cuckoo Wasp have been recorded worldwide, while Yorkshire has records from 21 species. However, identification is not easy and usually requires examination of features that are only discernible under a microscope. In addition, many species show significant variation and, over the years, there has been disagreement between taxonomists over which species particular specimens should be ascribed to. As a result, taxonomic nomenclature for Chrysis species is quite frequently being updated. C. corusca was first described as a separate species by E. Valkeila in 1971 but there is now a more recent publication providing a detailed key to the Cuckoo Wasps of the Nordic and Baltic countries (Paukkunen et al, 2015), including many UK species, amongst them C. corusca.
The dynamic nature of not only its actual geographical distribution but also our knowledge of this and its status as a separate species is a great example of the complexities of mapping species’ distributions. With respect to the distribution of this species, to paraphrase a certain US politician, because of limited recording our known knowns are considerably less than our known unknowns and, no doubt, unknown unknowns! However, Andy’s story just goes to show what you might discover when you begin biological recording, and the value of each record in shaping our understanding of the natural world.
Monitoring
Aculeates are not the easiest of taxa to identify and, while some can be confidently recognised in the field, many require close examination to identify to species level. There is no specific monitoring scheme for C. corusca or Ruby-tailed Wasps more generally, but as Aculeate Recorder for the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union, Andy is very pleased to receive any Yorkshire records in the form of photos or specimens, with dates and grid references.
Further Information
The Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society is a national organisation with an excellent website for those who want to learn more about this fascinating group. NEYEDC would like to thank Andy for his time and expertise in helping to create this blog. If you’d be interested in contributing a piece for the series, contact Lucy at lucy.baldwin@neyedc.co.uk. To find out more about biological recording, see the Naturalists page on our website.