This week in science: California wolves, the world's bugs, and the earliest quasars
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DETROW: It was like "Alien" in real life. It was like - it was...

BARBER: Oh, my gosh.

DETROW: It blew my mind.

ROTT: Life finds a way.

BARBER: But don't worry. These are not hatching out of human chests.

DETROW: Good. OK, OK.

BARBER: It's going to be OK.

DETROW: OK.

ROTT: Yeah, yeah, for now - but because these wasps are so small, it's, like, really hard to tell one species from another. So the scientists looked at a specific sequence of DNA from these wasps, and using that and some fancy modeling, they estimated there are 3,400 different species of one subfamily of parasitoid wasps in this one nature reserve.

DETROW: What?

ROTT: A lot.

BARBER: Yes, a lot - but scientists wanted to take it a step further to get a sense of how many types of all insects there were in the reserve in Costa Rica. So they used that modeling and a larger sample of insects to get a number.

ROTT: And then they used that number to try to solve this big scientific mystery, Scott.

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