The giant jaws may serve as both protection and a way to ensure males' genes get passed on to offspring, the researchers speculate.

"We don't really know what the male jaws are for," Kimsey told LiveScience. "However, in another species in the genus, the males hang out in the nest entrance. This serves to protect the nest from parasites and nest robbing, and for this he exacts payment from the female by mating with her every time she returns to the nest. So it's a way of guaranteeing paternity."
male and female wasps

Kimsey added, "The jaws are big enough to wrap around the female's thorax and hold her during mating."

Kimsey discovered the so-called warrior wasp on the Mekongga Mountains in southeastern Sulawesi during a recent biodiversity expedition.

"The first time I saw the wasp, I knew it was something really unusual," she said. "I'm very familiar with members of the wasp family Crabronidae that it belongs to but had never seen anything like this species of Dalara. We don't know anything about the biology of these wasps."

She named the insect-eating predator Garuda, after the powerful warrior of Hindu myth who is part human, part eagle.

The expedition was funded by a five-year grant from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program.