''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 considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. They are specialized

predator Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...

s of

butterflies Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The oldest butterfly fossi ...

, 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

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