Scientists are growing a pest to feed a pest that will spread to kill the original pest. The University of California Intermountain Research and Extension Center is growing a pest called cereal leaf beetle to feed its predator, the parasitic wasp T. Julis, will grow, too. The more beetles you have, the more wasps you have and the wasps can spread out into the affected area and kill more cereal leaf beetles. When the beetle is in its larvae stage, the wasp lays eggs inside the larvae. A wasp can lay between 5 and 15 eggs in one cereal leaf beetle larvae. The wasp larvae develop inside the cereal leaf beetle larvae, eventually killing it and eating it.
This particular wasp only attacks the cereal leaf beetle; it thrived in areas of Europe where the cereal leaf beetle was, too. It’s just a special kind of predator. It only requires one host, one larva, in order to develop from an egg into an adult.