Fig. 5

Caenorhabditis inopinata is found traveling on pollinating fig wasps but not parasitic wasps. Left, a dispersal C. inopinata nematode has dismounted from a pollinating Ceratosolen female fig wasp that has been placed on a petri dish. The scale bar represents 10 microns. Right, a table describing wasp carrier data. Fig trees tend to fruit synchronously within a plant but asynchronously between plants [19]. In 2016, two Ficus septica plants were observed to harbor figs with actively emerging fig wasps. Emerged fig wasps were caught in a plastic bag, killed, and placed onto agar plates. Plates were subsequently monitored for dismounting C. inopinata 3 h and 2 days later. Here, numbers represent the number of plated wasps with disembarking C. sp. animals. C. inopinata animals were never seen dismounting from parasitic wasps despite their habitat sharing with pollinating wasps harboring C. inopinata. “L4,” C. inopinata animals at the fourth larval stage of development