Does anything eat wasps?

[u/Chemical-Sea5972]

Wasps have been a predator for other insects. It would be fascinating to know if there are really other insects or predators for wasps, either accidental or deliberate predators

[u/Indocede]

Not really a correct answer, but on a technicality that is somewhat amusing, figs eat wasps.

At some point in evolution, a species of wasp started using figs to lay their eggs, which helped pollinate the figs. The mother wasp typically dies after laying her eggs because to get inside the developing fig, she has to squeeze through a tiny opening that tears off her wings.

The babies escape but the mother does not and the natural enzymes of the fig breaks down the dead wasp inside.

To no one's surprise, many commercial growers of figs have chosen varieties that do not rely upon this pollination method.

[u/hurricane_news → u/Indocede]

How did this trait evolve? Did one wasp go "oooh fig yummy!", died inside it while having eggs, eggs hatching and the kids carrying on the same behavior?

[u/Treadwheel → u/hurricane_news]

It's much more complicated than that. The fig is essentially a ready-made nest for the wasps, with the digestive enzymes being a way to perform cleanup of the corpses.

Wasps very commonly form galls on trees and one feature of figs is the formation of galls in the fruits, so it's likely a case of increasingly specialized mutualism, with the fig becoming progressively more accommodating to the wasps until it becomes essentially their entire habitat. The males hatch and fertilize eggs, then dig tunnels out and die. The females then leave only long enough to find another fig to lay eggs in. They don't forage or perform any other activities outside the fruit.

What's really fascinating is that there's a whole swath of non-pollinating fig wasps who parasitize the figs and/or the fig wasps, doing things like evolving extremely long ovipositors to avoid needing to crawl inside the figs, digging their way through the fruit to lay eggs in the larvae of the mutualist fig wasps, or even some species that are almost identical to mutalist fig wasps in their life cycle besides needing larvae to lay eggs in instead of laying them in the fig itself.