Copidosoma floridanum

Description

Copidosoma floridanum is a species of wasp in the family Encyrtidae which is primarily a parasitoid of moths in the subfamily Plusiinae. It has the largest recorded brood of any parasitoidal insect, at 3,055 individuals. The life cycle begins when a female oviposits into the eggs of a suitable host species, laying one or two eggs per host. Each egg divides repeatedly and develops into a brood of multiple individuals, a phenomenon called polyembryony. The larvae grow inside their host, breaking free at the end of the host's own larval stage. A cosmopolitan species, Copidosoma floridanum is distributed worldwide. Because of its significance to agriculture as pest control and its phylogenic relationship with other important species, the wasp's genome is being sequenced by the Human Genome Sequencing Center as part of the i5K project, which aims to sequence the genomes of 5,000 arthropods.