Poor social spider.
Ensnared, building its own tomb.
Parasitoid wasp.
Parasitoid wasps are known to lay eggs on their victims which are then consumed by the hatching larvae. Some species will even paralyse their victim and place them in a nest to be eaten alive by their offspring. Yet behaviour observed by Fernandez-Fournier et al (2018) has revealed a wasp species that behaves even more disturbingly.
Adult Zatypota sp. wasps were found to target a species of social spider that lives in a colony web and rarely leaves it. The wasps lay their eggs on the abdomen of the spider and when the larvae hatches it attaches to the spider. The larvae influences the spider to then leave its colony and spin a cocoon web in which the spider then waits until the larvae finally kills it. Its meal consumed, the larvae then spins a pupal cocoon within the protection of the outer cocoon web and a few days later emerges as an adult.
The results reveal that the spider is manipulated into performing unusual behaviours, since such social spiders rarely leave their colony and the cocoon web is a complete different form of web. The infected spider makes its own tomb before being eaten alive within it.
Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/een.12698