Howardula benigna
Cobb, 1921
1.1 (?) 5. (?) 98. (?)99.
3.5 - 5 . mm
2.5 4.0 4.7 4.1 1.9
Anus none or vestigial; vulva sometimes terminal; uterus nearly filling the body-cavity, posteriorly packed with larvae and anteriorly with segmented eggs, near the head in the vicinity of the small spermathecum narrowed and reflexed to the middle of the body, whence the narrow ovary turns forward and ends blind near the lead; onchium usually very obscure but the minute mouth opening still persisting.  Inert, viviparous, usually all of the same stage of development in any individual host-insect, each when mature containing about two thousand embryos and segmenting eggs; the larvae, apparently always all of one kind, sometimes ten to twenty thousand of them, proceeding from the mother nemas into the body-cavity, and into the sexual apparatus, of the host, and so becoming deposited with the eggs of the latter.

The newborn larvae measure as follows:
3.4 (?)12. 28. -91. (?)94.8
0.54 mm
2.3 3.2 3.7 2.8 2.2
Anus none or vestigial; tail conoid, straight, broadly rounded or subtruncate at the terminus.  After deposition along with the beetle eggs, the young nemas moult with little increase in size, some of them then boring their way into the body-cavity of even very young larvae of both sexes of the beetle, sometimes to the number of thirty but more often five or six.  The following are the dimensions and other details of these young but already spermatized individuals, as found both in the soil and in very young beetle-larvae, which in the body-cavity of the host reach the above, seven to ten times longer, mature form:
2. 16. (?)24/ 95. (?)97.
0.5 mm
2. 4./ 5. 4. 2.6

Habitat:  Common in the body-cavity (abdomen, thorax and even head) of Diabrotica vittala, trivittata, and 12-punctata, especially the former, infesting the two sexes about equally.
(Description- Cobb, 1921)

DNA Sequences Obtained
Specimen: Collected:
MSU-32 University of Missouri Sample