This week I wanted to showcase an incredible family of moths that are known to mimic a variety of bees and wasps depending on the genera and species. It's not just their looks that are incredibly accurate though. It's the behaviors as well!    Support the show -> https://www.patreon.com/user?u=46499107  IG: https://www.instagram.com/insects4fun/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085443614825 Email: [email protected]   Music supported by Lofi Girl with featured artists: Brillion, HM Surf, Tom Doolie, and Dimensions 32  Transcript: Welcome everyone to episode 57 of Insects for Fun! The weekly entomology podcast covering all kinds of interesting things in the world of entomology. Today we are doing a deep dive into clear wing moths, which are quite possibly the best wasp mimics I have ever seen.    Let’s start with the basics, as we always do. Clearwing moths belong to the family sesiidae, of which there are around 165 genera, and over 1,525 species in the world. There are other families, but we’re just gonna focus on this one today and to be honest it has way more species than I was expecting. That being said it's time for a quick disclaimer! I just wanna quickly remind everyone that when we dive into families that are this size, it becomes increasingly difficult to say that any one characteristic can be found within each individual. So just remember, every species is gonna be a bit different!    Alright so we have this family of moths called clearwings, but what’s so special about them? Well! These moths are daytime fliers for one, and are known for their incredible wasp mimicry. And let’s not forget those clear wings for which they’re named. You see these incredible creatures have evolved to mimic a variety of different wasp species. I'm talking about everything from yellow jackets to parasitoids, and the mimicry doesn’t stop at their looks. Even the flight and sounds they produce can resemble wasps, making them scary to many people who don’t even know they exist. This kind of mimicry is called batesian mimicry which is when animals that don’t have any special defenses of their own mimic ones that do in an effort to protect themselves. I suppose you could say that the ability to mimic something scary is a special defense although once you see through the bluff they’re in trouble. This is again one of those times when I strongly suggest you check out the instagram or fb pages because I’ll be posting images of different species, and they really are incredible.    For starters the wings aren’t just clear but also shaped to look like wasps with most being more slender and triangular in appearance, and as I mentioned earlier there are species which evolved to sound like the wasps and bees they mimic. This is particularly known to be the case for southeast asian species of which two were tested acoustically and found to produce sounds very similar to the bees they mimic, but different from other bees. I just can’t get over how these moths have evolved to strictly mimic individual bee and wasp species as opposed to being more general. Here’s an audio clip of their buzzing:    In 2020 Thailand a new genus and species was discovered which mimics a type of parasitoid called a braconidae. Unlike other mimics which rely on colors and body shapes, this one has marks on its wings which in flight make the body appear curved in the same way as a braconid wasp. Pretty crafty I gotta say. I’ll put a picture on the IG and FB pages.    Now on the other side of the spectrum there is a wasp mimic moth found in central and south america which does such an insanely detailed job that it left me staring for longer than I should have. The species is called Pseudosphex laticincta and I’m gonna put the image up of this one next to the wasp it mimics as well because man or man it is incredible.    Moving along to other incredible things, the caterpillars for sesiidae moths do not feed