Editing Parasitoid (section)

=== Charles Darwin ===

Parasitoids influenced the religious thinking of [[Charles Darwin]],{{efn|Darwin mentions "parasitic" wasps in ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'', Chapter 7, page 218.<ref>''[[On the Origin of Species]]'', Chapter 7, [http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=236&itemID=F373&viewtype=side page 218.]</ref>}} who wrote in an 1860 letter to the American naturalist [[Asa Gray]]: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars."<ref name=Darwin>{{cite web |url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2814 | title=Letter 2814&nbsp;— Darwin, C. R. to Gray, Asa, 22 May [1860] |access-date=5 April 2011}}</ref> The palaeontologist [[Donald Prothero]] notes that religiously minded people of the [[Victorian era]], including Darwin, were horrified by this instance of evident cruelty in nature, particularly noticeable in the [[Ichneumonidae|ichneumonid]] wasps.<ref name=Prothero2017>{{cite book |last=Prothero |first=Donald R. |title=Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-LIvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT85 |year=2017 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-54316-3| pages=84–86}}</ref>