Wasps are in many ways a unique insect, starting with the way they feed and reproduce, and ending with the composition of the poison and the ability to self-defense. All wasps belong to the order Hymenoptera, which, in addition to them, also includes numerous bees, ants, bumblebees, riders and sawflies.
Long-term studies of representatives of this order have led most evolutionary scientists to the conclusion that one part of insects (for example, riders and sawflies) are independent groups that develop in parallel, and the other (bees and ants) are already descendants of ancient wasps. At a certain stage of evolution, they developed the ability to feed and feed their offspring only with the nectar of flowers (which is typical for bees), or wings were lost, and the way of life became terrestrial or arboreal (this is the main distinguishing feature of ants).
It is interesting
Many primitive ant species are very similar to predatory burrowing wasps. For example, Australian bulldog ants are very similar to wingless wasps and even have a stinger and very strong poison.
The first photo shows a German wasp, and below is a bulldog ant:
Wasps are insects, among which both solitary and collective species are almost equally represented.Therefore, for biologists, they are very convenient objects for studying the transition of animals from a solitary independent existence, first to a simple colonial life, and then to social interaction with the caste structure of the family.
Scientists have not yet come to a consensus on a stable and unambiguous classification of wasps. To date, they are divided into several families and groups, the representatives of which, depending on the new studies carried out, sometimes move from one group to another.
The first level of such a classification divides wasp families into solitary insects and social ones. The following families of wasps belong to the solitary living:
- burrowing;
- sand;
- floral;
- road;
- German wasps;
- glitter wasps;
- scoli;
- typhia.
The group of social insects includes the family Real wasps (however, this also includes some types of sand wasps).
An excellent example of insects living in a family are, first of all, paper wasps - it is with them that summer residents of our country most often face.
In addition, hornets, also belonging to the family of Real wasps, are well-known social insects.
On a note
The main difference between a hornet and an ordinary wasp is its large size. If paper wasps are only 2-3 cm long, then for European hornets this figure reaches 3-3.5 cm. In addition, hornets have a wider nape (this is clearly visible under a magnifying glass) and characteristic dark red spots on the head there , where paper wasps have black patches. A hornet differs from a wasp in a more peaceful disposition - it bites a person much less often.
In the following photo, the hornet and wasp are located side by side, which allows you to appreciate the difference in their sizes:
The pictures below show wasps of different types (burrowing wasp, wasp wasp and scoli, respectively):
Entertaining wasp anatomy
Wasps belong to the suborder of stalked hymenoptera. Just a glance at the structure of the wasp makes it possible to understand why the suborder received such an unusual name: between the chest and abdomen of this insect there is a narrow “waist”, resembling a long thin stalk in some wasps.
Thanks to this feature, wasps can almost double their body without much difficulty and sting their prey from almost any angle - this allows them to win fights with other, sometimes even larger insects.
The body of the wasp is divided into three distinct segments - the head, thorax and abdomen, and has a strong external chitinous skeleton. The head of the wasp is very mobile and is crowned with two antennae that perform many functions: they capture odors and vibrations in the air, with the help of which the insect can evaluate the taste of liquid food and measure the length of the honeycomb in the nest.
In the photo - the head of a wasp at high magnification:
Each wasp is endowed by nature with powerful jaws - mandibles. They serve both to feed on plant foods - soft fruits, berries, flowers - and to kill prey. For example, most hornets, attacking even such large insects as cockroaches and praying mantises, practically do not use a sting, but completely manage only with strong jaws, which successfully crush the chitinous covers of their victims.
In the photo, the wasp caught a fly:
The flight speed of the wasp is quite high, but, however, is not a record for insects in general. That is why even well-armed striped predators often become victims themselves - for example, large predatory flies and dragonflies.
As for coloring, even here the wasps stand out from all other insects with a worthy variety. For example, some types of paper and flower wasps have bright contrasting black and yellow stripes and look so that it is impossible not to recognize them.
Other species may have a completely different color: from rich black to turquoise and purple. In any case, the body color of these insects is always well recognizable (especially in the animal kingdom) and allows them not to become a victim of an accidental attack, scaring away many mammals and birds.
The first photo clearly shows what the German wasp looks like - a common view in Europe:
And this photo shows a fiery glitter, painted in unusual (due to the lack of black and yellow coloring) colors:
It is interesting
It is the wasps that have the largest number of mimic insects that copy their coloration and appearance to protect themselves from predators. An excellent example is the hoverfly fly, which looks very similar to a wasp. Birds and mammals, knowing that the body of an insect in black and yellow stripes usually has a dangerous sting, bypass it. Such a fly-wasp itself is absolutely harmless.
A photo of a hoverfly fly - the black and striped coloration really gives it a menacing look:
It is noteworthy that the body of most wasps does not have such a huge number of hairs on the body, as, for example, in bees and bumblebees. This is due to the fact that the last two groups of insects are typical pollinators, and hairs help them increase the efficiency of collecting nectar on flowers. In the vast majority of wasps, there is no need for such a body cover, only some parasitic species have dense pubescence, which saves them from attacks by the hosts of infested nests.
It is interesting
Some types of wasps do not have wings at all. Such, for example, are German wasps parasitizing in the nests of their paper "brothers". At the same time, the absence of wings does not prevent them from having a sting and a very strong poison.
The wasp has five eyes: two large compound eyes located on the sides of the head and providing a wide angle of vision, and three small eyes on the forehead.
The main eyes have a rather complex structure, and consist of a great many individual elements that form a mosaic picture. They focus weaker than, for example, a person, but perfectly capture any movement of objects in the field of view.
As for the extra eyes, each of them is more human-like and even has its own pupil.
In another photograph of a wasp under a microscope, you can clearly see the additional eyes on the insect's forehead:
The sizes of wasps vary widely. So, for example, the giant scoli from Southeast Asia grows up to 6 cm in length; the Asian giant hornet is not far behind it - about 5-5.5 cm. But the vast majority of representatives still have more standard sizes for insects. In this case, usually (but, nevertheless, not always) the size of the body corresponds to the degree of danger of the insect.
Wasp sting, poison and stings
Despite the fact that many wasps are very successful with their jaws, attacking other insects or defending themselves from enemies, their sting is their main means of defense.
Over many millions of years of evolution, the ovipositor characteristic of hymenoptera became harder, stronger and connected with poisonous glands, turning into one of the most advanced killing tools in the insect world.
Unlike a bee, a wasp can sting a person several times in a row: its sting has no notches and therefore can be easily removed from fairly soft skin. Theoretically, the number of bites per attack is limited only by the wasp's venom supply. However, in reality, even one bite is enough to drive away a several times larger enemy.
Wasp venom is a dangerous mixture of a large number of different substances: one of them, for example, causes severe irritation of nerve endings, the other leads to cell destruction, the third is responsible for the development of an allergic reaction, etc.
At the same time, in different representatives of the families, the ratio of the components of the poison is strictly individual, and therefore the consequences of their bites differ. Thus, it cannot be said that all wasps sting in the same way.
The photo below shows a road wasp:
According to the descriptions of the victims, this insect stings more than any other, and its bite is considered the second most painful among insect bites in general (the palm here belongs to the South American bullet ants).
And in this photo - a huge Japanese hornet, which has an extremely toxic and allergenic poison. Every year several dozen people die from the attack of insects of this species. Their bites often result in hemorrhages and severe allergies.
And this insect in the photo is a scolia:
Despite their impressive size, scolia sting rather weakly, and the pain at the bite site is not felt for long. Such an unusual feature is explained by the fact that the purpose of the bite of scolias is mainly to immobilize the victim, and not to kill her.
Since ancient times, there has been an opinion that a hornet sting is incredibly painful and much more sensitive than a wasp sting.In fact, the poisons of the hornet and the wasp are in many ways similar, and the severe pain and serious consequences that everyone talks about when they mention the hornet are due to the large amount of poison injected. In addition, hornet venom is somewhat more allergenic and often leads to severe outcomes - anaphylactic shock, extensive edema, and even death.
On a note
The fear of bees and wasps is called apiphobia from the Latin "apis", which means "bee".
Brave Predators
A unique feature of wasps is the nature of their diet, which is largely determined by the specifics of the life cycle. In their development, these insects undergo the so-called complete metamorphosis: the larva has a thick, worm-like body and does not at all resemble an elegant, fast adult insect either in appearance or in its “gastronomic preferences”.
The wasp larva is a predator that feeds only on animal food, while adult insects mostly manage with flower nectar, sweet juicy berries and fruits. In some cases, the attitude to food even goes to extremes: for example, in philanthropists, also called bee wolves, the larva is physically unable to digest carbohydrates.
It is interesting
Even the huge scolia, which have an eerie appearance and gloomy colors in their adult state, feed on the nectar of flowers, but their offspring grow and develop, slowly eating the larvae of the cockchafer paralyzed by their parents.
For their larvae, wasps get the most diverse protein food, always choosing the most tasty pieces in their opinion.In social wasps, adults catch other insects or bite off pieces of meat from carrion or spoiling fish, then chew this food themselves, mix it with their digestive enzymes, and only then feed the offspring with the resulting mixture.
It is interesting
The larvae of social wasps do not excrete excrement, which would simply have nowhere to go from the honeycombs. All waste products accumulate in their body, and after the departure of the young wasp, they remain in the combs. Then the working individuals clean the vacated "cradle".
If we talk about single wasps, then their nutritional algorithm is completely different and bears little resemblance to that of public relatives. Female solitary wasps, as a rule, catch arthropods, paralyze them with their poison, hide them in a mink, and then lay eggs in their victims. The live "canned food" obtained in this way will serve as a source of food for the larvae developing from the eggs for a long time.
Interestingly, the victim with eggs laid in it usually lives until the pupation of its tormentor. The larva eats it, starting with those organs, the loss of which will not lead to a quick death, and therefore, although the paralyzed prey may lose most of the body, it will still remain alive.
The spectrum of potential victims is very wide. However, some species of wasps are highly specialized and prey, for example, only on spiders or bedbugs (at the same time, they can also attack very large tarantulas).
The photo below shows just such an attack on a spider:
But hornets, for example, eat literally everything that consists of meat.Scientists have found among their victims a variety of insects, slugs, worms, centipedes, even lizards and rodents. However, as entomologists suggest, the hornets do not attack the same mice, but only feed on the remnants of the table of wild cats at a convenient opportunity.
It is interesting
The rainforest-dwelling Emerald Cockroach Wasp (see photo below) strikes the brains of its prey - cockroaches - so precisely that they can then move only controlled by the wasp. It turns out a kind of cockroach-zombie. After the bite, the predator leads the victim by the antennae into its hole, where it lays an egg on it.
Beekeepers have a special relationship with striped predators around the world. For example, hornets against bees are a very formidable force: some large species of them can destroy hives of many thousands.
In general, wasps play an important role in nature, including in terms of human agricultural activities, because they are able to destroy a large number of harmful insects. In addition, wasps play the role of a kind of orderlies of insect populations and factors of natural selection.
Lifestyle and reproduction of wasps
The lifestyles of solitary and social wasps are quite different. So, for example, harvesting paralyzed prey is the only thing that an adult single wasp can “offer” to its larva. At this point, she stops caring for her offspring (only in some species, the female can visit the minks from time to time and bring additional food into them).
With social wasps, things are much more complicated. Their founding queen hibernates in a safe shelter (in a hollow, under a stone or under bark), and in the spring begins to build a nest and lay the first eggs in it.
The young insects hatching from these eggs take upon themselves all the further care of building a nest and obtaining food, and the task of the uterus is then reduced only to expanding the family.
The nest itself is built by social wasps from pieces of young tree bark, carefully chewed and sealed with saliva. The output is a kind of paper, which serves as the only building material for these insects. If we are talking about large enough nests of hornets, then in this case, winged builders can completely rip off the bark from the young branches of individual trees.
In the photo - a hornet's nest under construction:
It is interesting
Wasps never sleep, although at night their activity is significantly reduced. At night, they are in the nest and usually chew on the bark collected during the day. Near the nest, the noise from such chewing is sometimes clearly audible even at a distance of several meters.
All insects in the nest are sterile females. Only at the end of summer, the uterus begins to lay eggs, from which females and males capable of procreation emerge. These young individuals swarm, mate with each other, and then leave the parental nest forever.
Fertilized females soon find shelter for the winter, as their uterus did in her time, and the males die. At the end of the season, all working individuals die, along with the old founding female.
With the advent of spring, the life cycle of wasps begins anew, and everything repeats itself according to the scenario set by nature ...
Enemies and parasites of wasps
Despite the seemingly high security and ability of wasps to collectively defend the nest, they have many enemies. The main ones are parasites.
Numerous mites, beetles, some parasitic wasps and even certain types of parasitic wasps live in wasp nests. All of them feed on larvae, successfully defending themselves from working insects with the help of their sting, small size or skillful disguise.
Wasps are eaten by bears, wolverines, hedgehogs and many other wild animals that are not afraid of the bites of defensive insects. Inexperienced domestic dogs and cats are also sometimes not averse to feasting on striped "flies", but very often they suffer because of this.
Some birds also eat wasps. For example, bee-eaters have perfectly mastered the art of hunting these insects: the bird grabs the victim across the body, beats it on a branch, and then crushes and swallows.
But the European honey buzzard - a large bird of prey - catches insects with its paws on the fly, but before feeding the prey to its chicks, it carefully tears off the sting. Interestingly, the visual acuity of the honey buzzard is such that it can follow its prey in the summer forest from a distance of several hundred meters.
In the photo - a honey buzzard surrounded by angry insects:
And yet, despite the rather large number of natural enemies, the main threat to many wasps in nature is the reduction of habitats suitable for their life. So, today the common hornet is already becoming a rarity, usually arranging nests in hollows of trees, but often not finding a sufficient number of such shelters due to immense deforestation in some regions.
As for some other species of wasps, they may not be found anywhere else in the quantities necessary to preserve the population, therefore, for example, plowing even a small slope can lead to their disappearance in a particular area.
Given the rather sad world statistics, the governments of some countries are already carrying out special environmental measures aimed at protecting certain types of wasps.
Interesting video: the battle of the wasp with the spider
Not everyone knows the similarities and differences between bees and wasps
Just great. Helped me!
Have you lost your hornets? 🙂