Utah State scientists discovered how a velvet ant (which is a wasp) got its white fluff

At the foot of certain shrubs in the Mojave Desert, fluffy white motes skitter like tumbleweeds across the sand. Some are fruit: harmless, fuzzy orbs dropped by the creosote bush. Others are white wasps — not that kind — of the species Dasymutilla gloriosa, which have painful stingers and luxuriously silky hair, or setae.The creosote fruit and the female D. gloriosa, also called the thistledown velvet ant — which is a wasp, not an ant — are near perfect doppelgängers