parasitoidadj.n.

1847 Brit. & Foreign Med. Rev. 24 135 (heading) Nature of parasitoid formations.

1914 Science 9 Jan. 70/1 The insects that feed on other animals are divided into three groups: typical prædators..parasitoid prædators..and true parasites.

1922 W. M. Wheeler in Sci. Monthly July 70 Recent studies of the parasitic, or as I prefer to call them with O. M. Reuter, the ‘parasitoid’ Hymenoptera.

1974 Nature 22 Feb. 572/1 A parasitoid fly was suspected as the cause of death.

1988 I. Gauld & B. Bolton Hymenoptera ii. 12 From this strategy probably developed the most widespread, relatively unspecialized parasitoid behaviour that is encountered today.

2002 M. D. Greenfield Signalers & Receivers iii. 86 A female who discovers a host that already contains a (conspecific) parasitoid egg finds that egg by probing with her ovipositor, kills it by puncturing, and then deposits her own eggs.

1914 Science 9 Jan. 70/1 The parasitoids include such forms as the so-called ‘parasitic’ Hymenoptera.

1947 A. D. Imms Outl. Entomol. (ed. 3) iv. 163 Among insects parasites fall into two very different categories, viz. true, or ‘non-fatal’, parasites, and ‘fatal’ parasites or ‘parasitoids’.

1972 L. E. Chadwick tr. W. Linsenmaier Insects of World 300/1 Although it is important to know the distinction between parasites and parasitoids, in actual practice even entomologists tend to use the word parasite for both.

1995 Nature 9 Nov. 129/1 Members of the family [Phoridae] include pests of cultivated mushrooms, parasitoids of such unusual hosts as earthworms and snails, and the macabre ‘coffin fly’.