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 … Continue reading Parasites, Predators, Opportunists