p. 31 Current estimates put insects at around 479 million years old, making them the oldest land animals. One hundred and 30 million years later, homometabolous insects appeared: these are the insects that separate youth from adulthood with metamorphosis… When the first hymenoptera came along a mere 280 million years ago, it was a wasp. The prototype wasp was a vegetarian, and a rather inelegant-looking like creature without a sting. We know this because this is what its ancesteors – the sawflies – are like… also known as wood wasps or horntails… the name refers to the sawfly’s lack of the wasp waist. They also lack the agile flight and hard-cuticle armour of their more waspish relatives… the broad-bellied maiden aunts of the wasp world: stumpy, fierce and functional, they trail a clunky ovipositor on their rear, corrugated like a saw to cut into the plants in which they lay their eggs.”
p. 42 There are about as many fossil ants as there are fossil dinosaurs: over 750 described species of preserved anys have been found from at least 70 locations across the planet… in the Cretaceous period, a huge diversity of crazy-looking ants evolved, and scientists have had a lot of fun naming them. Take the ‘hell ant’, for example, with scythe-like mandibles that jutted menacingly upwards from the jawline… There are also the ‘iron-maiden’ ants, with ferocious mouth pasts covered in spikes designed to immobile prey. And the ‘beast ants,’ so called because of their colossal forelimbs, enormous alien eyes and many-tooth mandibles that swivelled open to receive what must have been very large prey… all went extinct in the late Cretaceous mass=extinction event, over 50 million years ago.”
p. 43 What makes an any an ant, and not a wingless wasp… Ants are the only stinging Hymenoptera that have a metapleural gland, a slit- of pustule-like opening found on the back of the thorax in workers and queens. This is a rather clever invention as it exudes a range of antibiotics, which help combat diseases in the colony. It also produces chemicals used in communication. Ants also have ‘elbowed’ antennae (‘geniculated’ if you’re an any taxonomist), made possible thanks to an extra-long first antennal segment. Another any giveaway is that the second abdominal segment in node-like, being constricted at front and back; in wasps, this segment is just a smooth and simple waist.”
p. 44 “The bee fossil record remains scrappy and sparse compared to that of ants. Most of the bee fossils are solitary species, while most of the fossil specimens are social bee workers from species that lived in damp forests and fed on resins. Since social bees didn’t evolve until 60 million years after the first solitary bees, the vast majority of bee fossils are not especially useful for revealing how wasps became bees. Despite this, we have two fossilised contenders for the star role as wasp-bee – they come from Burmese amber that formed in tropical forests 100 million years ago. Fossils of Melittosphex burmensis and Discoscapa apicula … are so different from each other that they delong to different biological families … there are no living representatives of their families.”
“Another candidare for the closest living relatives to bees are the Ammoplanidae, tiny wasps barely 2-4 mm in length… the wasp-bee fossils that have been found are also extremely small. Since the flowers of the early Cretaceous would have been very small, it would make sense if the first bees were sized to fit. Intriguingly, Ammoplanidae hunt tiny pollen-eating insects called thrips.”
p. 63 “bradykinins are the key neurotoxin component of wasp venom. They give the hunter the power to ensure that its prey victim is properly paralysed.,,, Ants also have ‘wasp kinins’. Bees, however, appear to have lost them. .. Intriguingly though, not all wasps have these magic peptides. Apoid wasps, Eumeninae (such as potter wasps) and Pompilidae (the spider hunters) all appear to lack bradykinins in their venom, but they still manage to paralyse their prey effectively. The jury is out on which ingredients they use. … The ‘mammoth wasp’ is a European species… the largest wasp in Europe… Stocky, with large abdomens… these colids spend their time digging around in the dirt, looking for scarab beetle larvae… series of landmark papers used cockroaches to show that wasp kinins can irreversibly block synaptic transmission across nerve cells. … the neurone pathways that are disrupted by bradykinins are the same as those targeted by the group of widely used pesticides (known as neonicotinoids) that have contributed to the declining populations of pollinating insects around the world. There is now overwhelming evidence that these pesticides have a detrimental effect on the cognitive functioning of insects… It seems that the pharmaceutical industry has been mimicking the pharmacological secrets of solitary wasp venom without even realising it.”
p. 72 “We tend to forget that the antibiotic products of microbes and fungi are a natural phenomena: organisms produce them, along with other useful bioactive agents like anti-fungals, anti-virals and immunosuppressants, to combat other microorganisms they come into contact with…Beewolves have made a surprising contribution to our understanding of this are. The mother wasps inject their swaddled babes with antibiotics from their antennae. Beewolf mums are nosts to Streptomyces bacteria.. a species of Streptyomyces produces the antibiotic Streptomycin, the second most medically useful antibiotic to be discovered after penicillin, in 1942. Today 80% of medicinal antibiotics are sourced from Streptomyces… mother excretes Streptomyces bacteria from gland openings between her antennal segments and deposits it as whitish masses onto the walls of the baby’s cocoon… these helpful bacteria kill any fungi inside the cocoon… the wasp larva spreads the bacteria around its nursery, like an diligent toddler. If the larva happsn to be female, it adopts these bacteria as a lifelong companion .. she is equipped to keep her own offspring fungi-free. This clever evolutionary mechanism (known as vertical transmission) ensures that the bacteria stays closely hooked up with its host across generations. Its worked like this for 68 million years.”
p. 86 Plant volatiles produced in response to herbivory are widely used to draw in natural enemies, like wasps, flies and beetles, to rid the plant of its own predator… Few organisms can help their poos being a little smelly; it’s the nature of host products.. a form of chemical eavesdropping and one that parasitoids have become well known for.” Frass- term for insect excreta. “There is even a technical term for a chemical that is emitted by one organism and detected by another species which then benefit from it – this is called a kairomone.
p. 87 The olfactory skills of wasps have made them patentable property, thanks to the creation of the ‘Wasp Hound’, a handheld odour detector that uses the sensory powers of parasitoid wasps to indicate the presence of explosive materials like TNT, or illicit substances like cocaine. The work enghines are the tiny parasitoid wasps Microplitis croceipes, which respond to chemical cues in the frass of their host, the moth Heliothis zea, in order to local it. In the 1980s, scientists discovered that the females of this wasp could be taught to associate a specific type of molecule with a reqard through associative learning and so could be trained to detect very specific odours, even very closely related chemicals.”
p. 100 Spiders parasitised by Homonotus wasps soon recover their faculties and go about their business, oblivious to the fact they now have a wasp egg attached to their abdomen… even when that egg hatches and the wasp larva begins to chomp its way through the less essential body parts, ensuring that the spiders vital organs remain intact until the larva is ready to pupate. … she appears to only select gravid female spiders to parasitise. She positions her egg in exactly the right place so that the hatching baby wasp larva can dive straight into the spider abdomen and feast deliciously on the developing spider eggs. Pompilus is even cleverer, as she also manipulates the weaving skills of the spider to provide safety for her offspring. The spider spends her days in the terminal cell of her burrow, ever decreasing in form thanks to the fattening wasp larva. But during this time she inadvertently spins a protective envelope among the sand, making the burrow a safe haven for wasp pupation.”
p. 110 “Together the social insects account for about 75% of the world’s insect biomass. But wasps tell the story of sociality better than do ants and bees. There are no solitary ants and all ant species are superorganisms; they’ve left nothing in their evolutionary wake to tell us how they got there. Honeybees, bumblebees and stingless bees are socially diverse and exciting, however, bees are just wasps that forgot how to hunt.”
p. 123 joneybees “Young bees start off their working life as nurses. As they get older, they graduate to out of hive work as foragers. Age is a steadfast regulator of behaviour in many social insects, not just honeybees, so much so that the process has its own name ‘age polyethism’. Does it also remind you of our solitary wasp, with her clock-like nesting cycle? Build, lay, provision, repeat. Chronology determins when she behaves in a particular way… honeybee cycle can be accelerated if a sudden demand arises for more foragers and fewer nurses and no matter how old they are, foragers can retreat to in-hive jobs should they be needed. .. some foraging honeybees specialise as nectar-foragers, while others are pollen-collectors… what they do, when and why is determined by a co-regulated set of four connected traits that all matter: ovaries, forage type, sugar cravings and age.. solitary reproductive insects forage on pollen and feed it to their brood, while they forage on nectar for personal delectation… this suite of linked behavious appears to respond to the instructions of a master regulator gene .. Vitellogenin is a precursor to egg yolk, and fundamental for reproduction in all egg-making animals…acts within a whole network of genes, producing molecules like hormones that carry instructions for the endocrine system.”
p. 128 Potter wasps perform some insect chemical wizardry while coiling the pots, enriching their walls with essential minerals such as magnesium, zinc and iron. Undoubtedly these garnishes contribute antibiotic properties to the nests, ensuring the brood is kept free of disease while it completes its lonely childhood, sealed in a pot… people in remote tropical parts of the world rely on these nests to distill essential minerals.. geophagy … eating insect-transformed earths is a traditional practice in parts of Africa, Asia and South America… provides women and children with the very same mineral supplements that you might buy in your local pharmacy… if an appropriately aged woman starts scratching the earth in search of a termite mound or wasp nest, it is taken as evidence that she is pregnant. These women have described how they ‘felt need’ or ‘strong desire’ to each insect earths.”
p. 164 “In some American populations of Poistes, wasps do seem to be able to recognise individuals by their facial markings, and they can learn new facial patterns… only insects known … not even honeybees can learn to recognise fellow bee faces. … not that useful for a honeybee, as every worker is (largely) equal. For a small foundress group of Polistes females .. crucial to the establishment and maintenance of the social hierarchy … the reproductive (dominant) foundress at the top and her subordinates forming an orderly queue below her… a few judiciously applied splashes of yellow face paint could upset the social pecking order… after an hour or so, however, social order would be re-established, suggesting that the wasps had learned the new look of their nestmates.”
p. 246 Bees distinguish between the concept of ‘same as’ and ‘different from’ in unconnected and contrasting objects… if it had learned that colour-matching produced a positive reward (such as sugar) … also vertical over horizontal lines… using a similar approach, bees could be trained to follow a ‘difference’ rule, if they say tallow at the entance, they didn’t choose a yellow branch. .. even more amazing… these visual cues could be replaced with odours and the bees were able to apply the sameness or difference rules they had learned …. Bees can transfer their abstract relational learning to different visual and olfactory cues. .. they can tell whether there is ‘more or less’ of something, and whether something is above or below another thing. He’s shown that bees count, and that they also have a concept of what zero means. Can be trained to respond additively – if trained that blue is good and yellow is good, when presented with blue and tallow they respond with twice the enthusiasm … known as configural learning.”
p. 249 Bees are reasoning, numerate, perceptive, complex cognitive organisms just like us. Despite their small brains and limited number of neurones, they have conceptual cognition. Just like you, they can link past experiences together for a future interaction with the world. This body of work has made scientists question what the minimal neural circuitry is for ‘higher-level’ cognitive function.”
-. 277 Biological control (or biocontrol) is a method of pest eradication that exploits pre-existing predator-prey relationships. It is a key ecosystem service, alongside pollination, and has an estimated value of well over $400 billion a year. In the US alone, the value of natural biocontrol provided by insects annually is estimated to be $4.5 billion…. Parasitoid wasps… account for almost 50% of the 230 invertenbrate species that are commercially used as biocontrol agents. For the price of a good bottle of wine, you can be the proud owner of enough Trichogramma wasps to strip your house clean of clothes moth eggs. Let them run free- don’t worry you won’t even see them, their wing span is about 0.5 mm 0 and within a few weeks, you’ll be moth- and wasp= free. The wasps lay their eggs inside moth eggs, which then hatch and feed off the moth egg, killing it. The wasps can’t survive without the moths.”
p. 278 Mealybugs adore cassava. In their homeland, the mealybug populations are kept at bay by the 1mm-long parasitoid wasp Anagyrus lopezi, which lays its eggs in mealybugs and nothing else. When cassava was first introduced to Africa and Asia to help feed hungry humans, everything went swimmingly,… until the mealybug arrived, causing 60-80 per cent reduction in crop yields… only saved by the rapid introduction of A. lopezi”.
p. 274 88% of flowering plants are pollinated by insects… thought to be worth more than $250 billion a year worldwide, contributing to almost 10% of the value of the world’s agricultural production . These figures are based on contributions to farmed crops and so overlook the value of pollination and predation that these insects perform in natural ecosystems.”
p. 279 The use of solitary hunting wasps for biocontrol in non-native regions has not been very successful. This is probably due to a poor understanding of their life histories and behaviour … when they are introduced to a new environment they often shift their prey preference… the best approach seems to be to adopt a local, native species.”
p. 290 The first Vespula vulgaris was spotted in New Zeland in 1921 but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that populations became properly established. Within 30 years, these invaders had completely altered the ecological balance of one of New Zealand’s most precious native habitats, the beech forests. The sooty beech scale insect is a true bug – a hermipteran … excrete a sugar rich honeydew from their behind which attracts an eclectic mix of invertebrates and vertebrates who feast on the sugary droplets; in return, they defend the sugar bug from predators… sugar actually comes from the plant, the bug plunges its mouth parts into the tree, tapping into the sugar-rich plant juices… being very long, the anus serves to keep the sugar hunters a safe distance away from the actual insect.. any honeydew that isn’t slurped up drops onto the bark, providing the perfect breeding ground for the black sooty fungus …. Beetles and moths feast on the fungus and its own secret microbiome of microorganisms. Along come the birds and lizards, many of which are found only in these beech forests, who munch on the moths and the beetles. Then along came the alien Vespula – she feasts like a hungry teenager at a sushi bar who knows they’re no picking up the bill, slurps up the honeydew but also picks off the protein feasts.”
p. 300 Over the course of the colony cycle in the UK, nests of the common yellowjacket produce an average of 9,600 adult wasps… total estimated pest biomass needed is 6.5 kilograms, which comes in at just shy of 130,000 insects per colony… Vespula wasps are likely to be removing over 30,000 arthropods per hectare and up to 234,000 per hectare in a good wasp year. .. unfussy opportunistic predators who are likely to be creaming off the most abundant invertebrates they encounter. This makes them rather useful as general caretakers of ecosystems; they help keep a diverse community of arthropod populations in check without hunting any to the brink of local existence.”
p. 307 Per unit of consumable protein, insect farming is twice as efficient as rearing cheicken… for every gram of protein insect-farming uses 17 times less water than cattle, and give times less than pig or chicken farming. At least 2 billion people across the globe consume insect protein as part of their diet. Over 2,000 insect species are eaten, with beetles (31.1%), butterflies and moths (17.5%) and wasps bees and ants (14.8%) being the most prominent. Wasps are usually eaten as larvae or pupae, and social species, like the Asian giant hornet, are especially popular because of the bonanza prize of thousands of brood from a single nest.”
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