The ovipositor is an
organ used by some of the
arthropods for
oviposition, i.e. the laying of
eggs. It consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages formed to transmit the egg, to prepare a place for it, and to place it properly. In some of the
insects the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but in many
parasitic species (primarily in
wasps and
hymenoptera) it is a piercing organ as well. It is used by the
grasshoppers to force a burrow in the earth to receive the eggs and by
cicadas to pierce the
wood of twigs for a similar purpose. Both
long-horned grasshoppers and
sawflies cut the
tissues of
plants by means of the ovipositor. None of these examples is quite as remarkable as the Megarhyssa species of
Ichneumon wasp (parasitic Hymenoptera), the females of which have a slender ovipositor several inches long, used to drill into the wood of
tree trunks. These species are parasitic in the
larval stage on the larvae of wood-boring insects, hence the egg must be deposited in the burrow of the host (or, often, directly into the host's body as it is feeding.)
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