system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do parasitic wasp identify their prey?

Thinking about, for example, the cicada hawk, how does the female identify cicada adults as her prey? Is it based on odor or some other chemical signature from the prey animal? Is it based on visual cues like body shape? Is it based on sound?

And building on this....could a parasitic wasp be trained to identify a different prey animal? For example, could they be taught to lay their eggs in different insect species? Or, if an egg is transplanted to a different species, would that egg hatch into a wasp with a taste for that new species?
gpt
Remember, insects don't have brains per se, they have ganglions, bundles of nerves throughout their body that process everything. They are not smart in a way that they think about stuff, they just do it. It's basically programmed into them from birth via genes, the ganglions react to certain stimuli in a certain way, a fly senses the smell of rotting meat and and the nerve bundles say "go there,eat, lay egg" (oversimplified), as those are 3 reactions triggered by the stimulus. Same with parasitic wasps, they might smell their prey, or react to the way they look or move. Some stimuli trigger certain reactions, like reflexes.

Edit: to answer the 2nd question, if there is a prey animal similar enough to what they are used to they might recognize it as such, or if they have a mutation that makes the "lay egg in that animal" part trigger easier they might go around and lay eggs everywhere, if it works then great, you just witnessed evolution as the new wasps will probably keep that trait, if the larvae or wasp die then it has been naturally selected.