"I could lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies."

Longtime readers of my Gothic Beauty gardening columns might already know of my fascination of and respect for the strategies and tactics of exoparasitic wasps. The common analogy comparing the life cycle of the typical hunting wasp to the title creature in Alien, while accurate, is also very simplistic. Using the ladybug exoparasite Dinocampus coccinellae as an example, pray that hunting wasps never see chordates as possible hosts.

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