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It's a bird, it's a plane! No, it's ... Pelecinus!?! Yes, a giant of the wasp world, lumbering by in flight to alight on a tree!
At first, you may not notice them resting on leaves in wooded areas, but these insects are hard to miss if they fly by your nose in late summer.
Life history of P. polyturator
   Pelecinus polyturator is a species of a parasitoid wasp. A parasitoid is an organism that uses another host organism to grow and develop. This means that the parasitoid larva (immature stage) eats the host and eventually kills it. Adult parasitods do not eat other insects, but will drink water or often consume nectar as a food source.
   Adult parasitoids do not sting. In the case of P. polyturator, the female uses the incredibly long abdomen for a different purpose. This species is a parasitoid of larval June beetles (Phyllophaga species), and the wasp female can lay eggs in the beetle grubs buried in the ground. Females are typically over 2 inches in length. Males are less commonly collected and are under 1 inch long, due to their relatively short abdomens.
Picture
Pelecinus collection records in North America (Johnson & Musetti 1999)
Around Cornell, watch for these elegant wasps in August and early September. They can be seen flying at eye level in areas of deciduous forest. At our latitude, adult activity peaks at the end of August. 
   There are three species of Pelecinus described, but only P. polyturator is found in North America. ​It is also distributed down into South America, along with two other species (P. dichrous and P. thoracicus). 
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   Our Cornell University Insect Collection has representatives from two of the three species of Pelecinus. One of the specimens of Pelicinus polyturator we have pinned was collected in 1893!

Female Pelecinus polyturator

above images: copyright Andrew Murray
click here to return to main "Insects of Cornell" website & find links to student species pages
webpage (and top two images) by Elizabeth Murray -- Cornell University, Department of Entomology (Nov. 2017)
references:  Johnson, N.F., Musetti, L., 1999. Revision of the proctotrupoid genus Pelecinus Latreille (Hymenoptera: Pelecinidae). Journal of Natural History 33, 1513-1543.