Published in the Jan. 15 issue of Science, the findings may help advance our understanding of how to use these wasps as natural agents against agricultural pests and disease-carrying insects.

"These genome sequences will be a major tool for agricultural pest control," said Chris Smith, assistant professor of biology at San Francisco State University and one of the study's authors. "Many people may not realize how dependent humans are on these tiny wasps which protect our food crops and save the U.S. billions of dollars each year by reducing crop loss."

An international consortium of scientists mapped the complete DNA sequences for three species in the Nasonia genus, a group of tiny parasitic wasps that are a quarter of the size of a fruit fly. The wasps lay their eggs on other insects, which then hatch and kill the host creature. Wasps in the Nasonia genus are particularly suited to genetic research because the males develop from unfertilized eggs.

Since they only have one copy of each gene, scientists can immediately see the effects of mutant genes, while in most species the second copy of the gene can hide problems in a mutant gene.

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