This page offers photos of other creatures that prey on or have interesting relationships with tree crickets.
This healthy looking female Forbes’ tree cricket is sleek and green. When she became dull yellow in color and her abdomen became grossly bloated, I thought perhaps she was ill from not being able to oviposit her eggs.
After she died I put her in a small container, and some time later I discovered this horsehair worm also in the container. Her abdomen was no longer bloated.
Grass-carrying wasps make their nest in spaces with a shallow entry. This nest of Isodontia mexicana is on a shallow ledge of the top space of a roll open window.
This is an adult Isodontia mexicana which emerged from the pupa below.
This is a young nymph of a Snowy tree cricket, Oecanthus fultoni. The parent of the above adult grass-carrying wasp put this tree cricket in a paralyzed and preserved state, to be available for any wasp larvae in the window ledge nest.
The young tree cricket is on the far right of this photo. These are all the orthopterans found in that window nest — including coneheaded and meadow katydids and one tree cricket.
Oethecoctonus oecanthi is a very small wasp that parasitizes the eggs of tree crickets. This photo shows a fully developed wasp inside a tree cricket egg. Tree cricket eggs are 3-4mm in length, so these wasps are very small. Adult females are only 2.4mm long. How they manage to get their eggs inside a tree cricket egg that is 5mm from the surface of the stem is a mystery.
This photo shows the head of a wasp inside a tree cricket egg. When I find these wasp carcasses, they are in stems with tree cricket eggs that should have emerged that prior season. Why these wasps never managed to leave the stem is a mystery.
This is a fully developed wasp, which never left the tree cricket egg. Note the shape – a perfect match for a tree cricket egg.
I often encounter mites inside stems that I have opened to inspect the status of the previous season’s tree cricket eggs. In this empty egg case, you can see yellow shadows of mites. As far as I know, they are not true predators and did not eat the tree cricket embryo, rather they take advantage of an available space in which to dwell.
With a backlit view through a microscope, we get a better view of the profile on the mites.
This video shows the movements of mites inside the empty tree cricket egg case.
This Forbes’ tree cricket female expired when this Stylogaster (parasitoid fly) became too large for her abdomen to contain.
This Spined Soldier Bug is a type of stink bug. It is in the process of paralyzing and consuming this Narrow-winged tree cricket. Stink bugs have a long stiff snout, a rostrum, which can both inject a paralyzing agent and digestive enzymes. The enzymes break down the tissues in their prey, allowing them to also use their rostrum to suck out the liquified tissues.
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This large spider, genus Kukulkania, was dragging this adult male tree cricket (Oecanthus varicornis or texensis) into its lair.
https://bugguide.net/node/view/415183
