{"id":782260,"date":"2026-07-24T17:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782260\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:52:11","slug":"scientists-searching-for-a-devastating-crop-killing-pest-discovered-an-alien-nightmare-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782260\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists searching for a devastating crop-killing pest discovered an ‘alien’ nightmare instead\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weevil beetle<\/a> Lixus subtilis is a persistent problem for farmers. It\u2019s known for tearing through crops \u2013 particularly sugar beets \u2013 across large parts of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Anatolia and China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, when researchers set out to map its natural predators in the sugar beet fields of Yining City and Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in China\u2019s Xinjiang region, they were hoping to find something that could inform pest control efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The collaborative study involved researchers from Xinjiang University in China, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n

Through careful collection of damaged sugar beet petioles (the offshoot that connects a leaf to the main stem\u2019s nodule) and rearing parasitoid-infected beetle larvae in a laboratory, they made two important discoveries.<\/p>\n

First, they confirmed a known predator:\u00a0Eurytoma curculionum,\u00a0a wasp<\/a> already documented by science that parasitises weevil larvae \u2013 though this was its first confirmed recording in China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then things got stranger. Digging into the same fields, the researchers turned up a wasp species<\/a> that had never been documented anywhere \u2013 and it doesn\u2019t attack the weevil at all. Instead, it parasitises\u00a0E. curculionum.<\/p>\n

Many wasp species are parasitoids: parasites<\/a> that eventually kill their host. Females lay their eggs inside the larvae or eggs of various insects. The wasp larvae then eventually bursts from the host\u2019s body as a fully developed adult, Alien-style.<\/p>\n

\"\"Chlorocytus\u00a0papahemii\u00a0Tselikh & Li, sp. nov., female, holotype.\u00a024. Same, Body, lateral view;\u00a025. Same, Head, frontal view;\u00a026. Same, Fore wing;\u00a027. Same, Head and pronotum, dorsal view;\u00a028. Same, Antenna;\u00a029. Same, Metasoma, dorsal view;\u00a030. Same, Mesosoma, dorsal view;\u00a031. Same, Body, dorsal view. Credit: Li et al., 2026.
\nHyperparasitoids in the field<\/p>\n

This new species (Chlorocytus papahemii), a small, iridescent-coloured wasp belonging to the Pteromalidae family, takes being a parasite to another level. It\u2019s a hyperparasitoid \u2013 a parasite of a parasite. So, the pest is preyed on by a parasitoid wasp, which is in turn preyed on by this newly-discovered species, placing it at a fourth trophic level of the food chain.<\/p>\n

This new wasp is crucial for pest control, since hyperparasitoids can kill off the very wasps farmers are relying on to keep weevil numbers down \u2013 killing off the natural check before it can do its job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The researchers named the new species\u00a0Chlorocytus papahemii,\u00a0in honour of Ernest Hemingway \u2013 specifically a nod to the author\u2019s well-known nickname \u201cPapa.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The study, published in the open-access journal ZooKeys<\/a>, lays out detailed descriptions of both wasps, giving researchers a clearer picture of the weevil\u2019s full food chain \u2013 and a better chance at keeping it in check.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read the full findings\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Top image: Chlorocytus papahemii Tselikh & Li, sp. nov., female, holotype. Credit: Li et al., 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The weevil beetle Lixus subtilis is a persistent problem for farmers. It\u2019s known for tearing through crops \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-782260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}