''Editha'' is a small genus of large, brightly colored sand wasps, restricted to

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

. They are specialized

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

s of

butterflies Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

, and after capturing and paralyzing their prey, they strip the wings off before placing the bodies in an underground cell to serve as food for the wasp larva.

References

* Crabronidae Apoidea genera Hymenoptera of South America {{Apoidea-stub