A broadly Holarctic ichneumon wasp, recorded in Europe, northern Asia and North America.
Fine-art photographic collection
Buathra laborator
A parasitoid wasp that freezes a moth's development and turns the pupa into its nursery.
About this species
Buathra laborator(Thunberg, 1822)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Buathra laborator is a large ichneumon wasp whose larva develops at the expense of a moth host. The female attacks a late larva or pupa, arrests further host development and leaves one offspring to consume the immobilised body.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Hymenoptera · Ichneumonidae · Buathra
Accepted species. GBIF uses 1822 for the original publication; some national lists have repeated the later 1824 date. · checked 2026-07-15
Holarctic regionBroad documented range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
What makes this species remarkable?
It is an idiobiont parasitoid: the female's attack prevents the host from continuing normal growth, preserving it as a fixed food supply.
A single wasp larva develops inside or on one moth host, converting nearly the entire host body into the tissues of one adult parasitoid.
Its genome has been assembled into chromosome-scale sequences, giving researchers a molecular map of a life cycle spent largely hidden inside another insect.
More photographs
2