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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's the coconut lacroix that tastes just like
Speaker 2: sunscreen and you wouldn't have it any other way. Ali
Speaker 2: Ward back with an episode of Ologies. I'm so proud
Speaker 2: of you that you're listening to you're doing it. Maybe
Speaker 2: you thought no way and help word okay fine, or
Speaker 2: perhaps maybe you're listening with your arms crossed over your chest,
Speaker 2: saying make me like wasps. I dare you. You can't
Speaker 2: do it? Watched me, wasp, me, watch me do it?
Speaker 2: First off, okay, how many species of wasp can you name?
Speaker 2: I know you're like yellowjacket hornets, the big mean hornets,
Speaker 2: the paper wasp. Maybe you've said the mud dauber. That's
Speaker 2: what five right there? Oh hm, I'm sorry. There's tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of described wasp species, so many uncategorized undiscovered ones.
Speaker 2: They are like the tiny sharks of the air. They're
Speaker 2: feared apex predators who get a bad rap, and most
Speaker 2: of them will not harm you. So hating on wasps
Speaker 2: so yesterday, so ghosh, So we're gonna dig it. This
Speaker 2: ologist is a natural history writer, the principal author on
Speaker 2: the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. He
Speaker 2: has been a professional entomologist at the organ Zoo, the
Speaker 2: Cincinnati Zoo, the Smithsonian Institution. I have wanted to talk
Speaker 2: wasps for years with him, but we wanted to wait
Speaker 2: until his new book dropped. And it's called Wasps The
Speaker 2: Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Instinct. And did just drop it?
Speaker 2: Just came out in March, so we will chat. But
Speaker 2: first we will thank patrons at patreon dot com slash
Speaker 2: ologies for supporting the show. It will cost you a
Speaker 2: cool dollar a month to join and submit your questions.
Speaker 2: And thanks to everyone leaving reviews which keep the show
Speaker 2: kicking ass in the charts. We're going to read afresheet,
Speaker 2: which we do every week. This one is from Floodball,
Speaker 2: who left the Apple review. I'm a medical student in
Speaker 2: need of worldly wisdom in this podcast has absolutely changed
Speaker 2: my life. No other words. I love you, Floodball, I
Speaker 2: love you back. You're about to love wasps honkre down.
Speaker 2: So this totally unpronounceable ology is derived from the Greek
Speaker 2: word for wasp, although so many people online just use
Speaker 2: the term waspology we're going to discuss. We'll also cover
Speaker 2: homicidal hornets, the most painful stings, bug corsets, modified egg cannons,
Speaker 2: breath taking, biodiversity, some gardening tips, why a wasp wants
Speaker 2: your sandwich, some barbecue strategies, underdogs, zombie victims, and snack faults.
Speaker 2: As we do our best to make you horny for
Speaker 2: hornets Gonna Happen with author entomologist and champion of your
Speaker 2: soon to be former enemies, sphexologist Eric Eaton. First thing
Speaker 2: I'll have you do is if you could say your
Speaker 2: first and last name and your pronouns.
Speaker 3: Sure, Eric with a c Eaton and he and him sweet.
Speaker 2: Okay. Now, we discussed what theology for this would be,
Speaker 2: and it was aologist. How do you say it?
Speaker 3: There's different pronunciations. There's spheaksology and specxology, and I'm not
Speaker 3: sure which one is preferred, if either.
Speaker 2: I definitely think if there's a phobia attributed to it,
Speaker 2: there should be an ology.
Speaker 3: Right, that's absolutely right, I agree.
Speaker 2: And perhaps even aphelia for people who are drawn to
Speaker 2: study them.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, I would agree with that as well.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a little bit about how long
Speaker 2: you have been into bugs?
Speaker 3: Oh? Okay. I usually go with my mom's account, which
Speaker 3: is that I became interested in all things nature in kindergarten,
Speaker 3: and I vividly remember my teacher was a gifted artist,
Speaker 3: and she drew a trapdoor spider on the chalkboard one
Speaker 3: day and I was just mesmerized by that, and then
Speaker 3: she told us how it behaved, and I was even
Speaker 3: more fascinated, and so my affinity for nature has always
Speaker 3: been the underdog or the things that most people disdain.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, sharks before they were cool,
Speaker 3: and snakes and spiders and insects and things of that nature.
Speaker 3: And if I'm truthful, that I got interested in wasps
Speaker 3: initially because no one could call me a sissy for
Speaker 3: catching something that could fight back. But then when I
Speaker 3: learned about how they behave and their natural history, is
Speaker 3: it my interest just took off all the more.
Speaker 2: Were you ever interested in bees first, or did you
Speaker 2: go straight from like spiders and underdogs to wasps.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I think I've always kind of
Speaker 3: had an affinity for you know, flying stinging things, probably,
Speaker 3: And by today's measure, bees are just a subset of wasps. Anyway,
Speaker 3: They've gone from the predatory lifestyle to or parasitoid lifestyle
Speaker 3: to the pollen collecting lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Pardon me, hold up? Bees are a subset of wasps?
Speaker 2: Tell me everything.
Speaker 3: Well, that's kind of an on well ongoing debate, but
Speaker 3: the trend is towards the idea that, yeah, bees are
Speaker 3: essentially pollen collecting wasps, and there are other wasps, by
Speaker 3: the way, that are what you would call true wasps
Speaker 3: that also collect pollen.
Speaker 2: Just a quick taxonomy aside. So my friend Wikipedia told
Speaker 2: me that a wasp is any insect of the narrow
Speaker 2: wasted suborder Apocrta that is not a bee nor an ant.
Speaker 2: But wasps do share a common ancestor with bees and ants.
Speaker 2: So wasps come in a whole big variety of genera
Speaker 2: from Vespa hornets and Vespula aka yellow jackets. But again
Speaker 2: there's giant biodiversity, including weight wasps who collect pollen. What
Speaker 2: are those called?
Speaker 3: They're called pollen wasps, not surprisingly, and they're solitary though
Speaker 3: they're not social. Part of the thing about wasps is
Speaker 3: that our public definition of wasps is very narrow. It's
Speaker 3: basically what we call a hornet or a yellow jacket
Speaker 3: or a paper wasp, one of the social species of wasps,
Speaker 3: when in reality, the overwhelming majority of wasps lead solitary
Speaker 3: lives and only a fraction of them are capable of
Speaker 3: stinging us.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, the first thing you think about when you
Speaker 2: think of a wasps nest is you think about a
Speaker 2: ton of them who want to hurt you, And so
Speaker 2: you're saying both of those things are flint flam Well.
Speaker 3: It depends on the circumstance. If you aggravate a nest
Speaker 3: of social wasps, you're going to be in for it.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're venom and their sting is used primarily
Speaker 3: in defense of their nest because their nests contain very
Speaker 3: soft and helpless grubs and eggs and pupa that can't
Speaker 3: defend themselves, and so the workers are unleashed at the
Speaker 3: slightest hint of hostility.
Speaker 2: So again, not all wasps are social, and only a
Speaker 2: fraction of them sting, y'all. So when you think about
Speaker 2: a hornet's nest or a yellow jacket's nest, those are
Speaker 2: all only one type of wasp, the social ones. And
Speaker 2: what would you do if a bear pounded on your
Speaker 2: window and poked its snowed in your door, hungry for
Speaker 2: your babies? Maybe you would brandish the venom gun attached
Speaker 2: to your butt to defend your several thousand newborns. They
Speaker 2: have so many babies. What about when you describe the
Speaker 2: body of a wasp? What makes up a wasp? Is
Speaker 2: it the type of wings or mouth parts?
Speaker 3: There are four winged insects, and their wings are connected
Speaker 3: by these hamuli, which are little hooks on the hindwing
Speaker 3: that joined to the edge of the hind edge of
Speaker 3: the front wing, so that they act as one pair. Wow,
Speaker 3: they don't. Yeah, they don't flap independent of each other.
Speaker 3: But the sting, by the way, is really a weaponized
Speaker 3: egg laying organ I love that. Yeah. In the evolution
Speaker 3: of wasps, the females went from just this injecting egg
Speaker 3: injecting device basically to a venomin cochecting device, and they
Speaker 3: then put their egg out through an oviduct rather than
Speaker 3: through what is now their stinger.
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, let's let's ask the question, probably on
Speaker 2: everyone's mind, how many times have you been stung? And
Speaker 2: how do you feel about it?
Speaker 3: And not very many?
Speaker 2: Good for you?
Speaker 3: And those times I have been has been my fault,
Speaker 3: disturbed a nest by getting too close or netted the thing,
Speaker 3: and it's you know, found a way to jab me.
Speaker 3: But most of the time I'm gentle with them, and
Speaker 3: they're gentle with me. Right now, we have a paper
Speaker 3: wasp nest with one wasp on it in the corner
Speaker 3: of our back door, and you know we come and
Speaker 3: go out of there with no problem. I mean, it
Speaker 3: took us, you know a couple of weeks to recognize
Speaker 3: it was even there. So you know, the idea that
Speaker 3: wasps are super aggressive probably is misinformation and exaggeration, and
Speaker 3: you know, the media does a good job of that,
Speaker 3: and if you're in the business of pest control, you
Speaker 3: know it's it's to your advantage to paint them as
Speaker 3: very aggressive animals.
Speaker 2: Maybe just because they're not fuzzy, people don't trust them
Speaker 2: as much. And are they not fuzzy because for the
Speaker 2: most part they're not collecting pollen and nectar?
Speaker 3: Well, they are hairy. Actually, some are really hairy, like
Speaker 3: velvet ants, which are actually the females of velvet ants
Speaker 3: are wingless, and so they look like big furry ants
Speaker 3: running around on the ground.
Speaker 2: So velvet ants are wasps even though they're not ants,
Speaker 2: nor are they made of velvet. And they're called cow
Speaker 2: killers even though they cannot kill cows, so the situation
Speaker 2: is indeed a little hairy.
Speaker 3: Most other wasps out hairs that are called seta and
Speaker 3: seta usually have some kind of sensory function, and so
Speaker 3: they're either detecting sense or air currents. Their vision isn't
Speaker 3: necessarily really good. They're good at detecting motion in lieu
Speaker 3: of that their CETA can detect air currents.
Speaker 2: Oh can you imagine if I mean, I guess if
Speaker 2: you have a lot of backhair, you probably could tell
Speaker 2: which direction the breeze is coming from. I suppose we
Speaker 2: use it similarly, right, Oh.
Speaker 3: Maybe I've got a ponytail right now because of COVID.
Speaker 2: So you're not the only one out there for sure.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm so excited to hear about, like work
Speaker 2: out in the field. Did you have to do in
Speaker 2: collecting stories and data for your book?
Speaker 3: I mean, I did study entomology as an undergraduate at
Speaker 3: Oregon State.
Speaker 2: Eric's mentor was the late doctor George Ferguson, who was
Speaker 2: a world authority on wasps and donated his collection of
Speaker 2: eighty thousand specimens to Oregon State University Oregon State's up
Speaker 2: Hi Hi to your Dead Wasps. Anyway, Eric got to
Speaker 2: learn about their behavior from doing field research.
Speaker 3: Some things are just stunning. I was in Massachusetts and
Speaker 3: I watched this Mason wasp, which is a solitary relative
Speaker 3: of yellow jackets, and and she was going over the
Speaker 3: surface of this curled up leaf, and I knew that
Speaker 3: there was a caterpillar in there, and I knew that
Speaker 3: Mason wasps hunt caterpillars, but she didn't go after it
Speaker 3: the way I thought you would, which is to just
Speaker 3: bite a hole in the leaf and drag the thing out.
Speaker 3: She forced it to eject. And when these caterpillars eject,
Speaker 3: they basically bungee jump out of the thing. They release
Speaker 3: a thread of silk that they hang off of, but
Speaker 3: they just leap out of their little curled leaf. And
Speaker 3: so what she does is she forces the thing to
Speaker 3: eject and then grabs it in mid air before it
Speaker 3: can reach the ground.
Speaker 2: Oh nice catch. Yeah, that's some NFL stuff right there.
Speaker 2: Nice work. And you said she are a lot of
Speaker 2: the wasps that we see are familiar with. Are those females?
Speaker 3: Excellent question. Well, let me put this way, when when
Speaker 3: people ask, you know, well, why are wasps such bastards
Speaker 3: in actuality, it's only the females that sting. So they're bitches. Bitches.
Speaker 2: We got that question so much of like why are
Speaker 2: they such dicks? But they're not right the sea word,
Speaker 2: thank you very much.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, but again it's only the You know,
Speaker 3: our definition of wasp tends to be these social species
Speaker 3: that we tend to have negative interactions with and all
Speaker 3: the workers of social wasps are female and males are
Speaker 3: only produced at the end of the colony life cycle
Speaker 3: and they're released to mate with with queens or females
Speaker 3: from other colonies at the end of the cycle. But
Speaker 3: that said, we see a lot of male wasps. Also.
Speaker 3: The males are either lounging around on flowers, eating nectar
Speaker 3: and stuff, because their only job is to find a female, right,
Speaker 3: But the females have to do all this other stuff.
Speaker 3: They have to build a nest, which is often a
Speaker 3: burrow in the ground or existing cavity in a log
Speaker 3: or something of that nature, and then she has to
Speaker 3: go hunt food to store for her offspring. Or for
Speaker 3: those that don't make nests, they just have to find
Speaker 3: a host and lay an egg on or in it,
Speaker 3: or in the case of gall wasps, they have to
Speaker 3: find the right host plant. And so they got a
Speaker 3: lot of work to do, the females, and for that
Speaker 3: we should admire them. I mean, wasps are kind of
Speaker 3: a symbol of female empowerment as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 3: But the males are, yeah, they're just either lounging around
Speaker 3: or they're defending a harem of females, and so often
Speaker 3: the males are the aggressors, even though they can't sting,
Speaker 3: they're trying to chase off any intruders that might harm
Speaker 3: their group of females.
Speaker 2: So social wasps are a minority of wasp species, but
Speaker 2: are simply more visible because the hangout and crowds and
Speaker 2: maybe you've seen their nests dangling from somewhere. Now. The
Speaker 2: majority of wasps are solitary. They're chillen solo. Maybe they're pollinating.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're laying their egg babies on a live spiders
Speaker 2: or cockroaches and just tucking them in to devour their
Speaker 2: victim alive and then getting out of dodge. Oh and
Speaker 2: word alert. So a parasitic organism kills its host, but
Speaker 2: a parasitoid lets its babies kill you. Can you imagine
Speaker 2: getting eaten alive by a baby? How pissed? Would you be?
Speaker 2: So embarrassing? But back to the social ones who hang
Speaker 2: out and clicks. How are these things that have a
Speaker 2: tiny knot of neuronal ganglia doing it? How are they
Speaker 2: doing it? I can't even organize a group text. Do
Speaker 2: they communicate with each other? Like with social dances like
Speaker 2: bees do or no no.
Speaker 3: For the social wasps, their main form of communication is
Speaker 3: something called trophylaxis, which is mutual feeding. And so you'll
Speaker 3: see if you watch a paper wasp nest, which I
Speaker 3: recommend doing, you know, maybe use binoculars, but you'll see
Speaker 3: two wasps appearing to kiss, and what they're doing is
Speaker 3: they're one is giving food to its nest mate, and
Speaker 3: they also do that with the young. The larvae are
Speaker 3: fed protein matter and then they in turn regurgitate kind
Speaker 3: of a sweet secretion that feeds the adults.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you feed your baby, and your baby's like thanks,
Speaker 2: and then burps up lunch for you, and you're like,
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you, my baby.
Speaker 3: You mean, ma'am.
Speaker 2: That is happening all over the globe right now, And
Speaker 2: you never knew before. So many mysteries in the world
Speaker 2: of wasps, some big, some teeny teeny, like a tenth
Speaker 2: of a millimeter long. One thing I think that's so
Speaker 2: interesting about wasps. I didn't know until I visited the
Speaker 2: University of California, Riverside. They're entomology department there that wasps
Speaker 2: are not what we always think of with yellow jackets
Speaker 2: and mud daubers and stuff like, there are these tiny
Speaker 2: little are they called fairy flies?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So can can you tell me a little
Speaker 2: bit about the range from these little fairy flies all
Speaker 2: the way up to so called murder hornets? Yeah, fairy
Speaker 2: I can tell you're already bristling at the murder hornet.
Speaker 3: That was unfortunate. Okay, First of all, let's lay out
Speaker 3: the lifestyle of most wasps, and that's a parasitoid lifestyle.
Speaker 3: And a parasitoid is basically a parasite that invariably kills
Speaker 3: the host. And in the case of fairy flies and
Speaker 3: several other families of tiny wasps, by the way, they
Speaker 3: are parasitoids of the eggs of other insects. And you
Speaker 3: can get several tiny egg parasitoids out of one egg
Speaker 3: of the host. Is crazy.
Speaker 2: So imagine an insect's egg and into it a wasp
Speaker 2: has jammed dozens of her own babies into your baby,
Speaker 2: and her babies eat your baby from the inside out.
Speaker 2: Maybe don't imagine this, but the point is parasitoid wasps,
Speaker 2: especially these teeny tiny, black, shiny fairy flies, they get
Speaker 2: a lot of bang out of their buck for eggs
Speaker 2: and they're sometimes used as biowarfare against agricultural pests.
Speaker 3: And some fairy flies are nearly microscopic. There's one that
Speaker 3: barely exceeds the size of a paramecium. I think, oh
Speaker 3: my god, yeah, yeah, and it's got you know, it
Speaker 3: does its entire stuff with you know, only a few
Speaker 3: hundred neurons or something. I mean, it's just ridiculous how
Speaker 3: complex such a tiny thing can be.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: And they get bigger and bigger then until I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously we probably assume that some of the wasps we
Speaker 2: see out and about are gnats, right.
Speaker 3: Probably, Yeah, You're not likely to see these things because
Speaker 3: you have to set up flight intercept traps and malaise
Speaker 3: traps and then you can put them under a microscope
Speaker 3: to see them.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Malay's trap. Side note are the white tents
Speaker 2: that are covering a jar and entomologists set them out
Speaker 2: in fields or yards to collect a sampling of local bugs.
Speaker 2: And all those little things that might just look like
Speaker 2: dust motes in the wind, they may be unidentified species.
Speaker 2: There are so many little bugs that we haven't formally
Speaker 2: met yet. I lived in an apartment and in the
Speaker 2: summer i'd get little nats sometimes all over my bathroom mirror,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until I found a dead one, looked
Speaker 2: at it and sent a picture to Leela Higgins from
Speaker 2: the Entomology episode, and she was like, oh, that's a wasp.
Speaker 2: There used to be a fig tree right under my window,
Speaker 2: and so they were probably fig wasps, which so many
Speaker 2: of us have heard that if you eat a fig Newton,
Speaker 2: you're eating so many dead wasps. Is this true or false?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, even if it is, they're so infantestically small.
Speaker 2: You're right, it's like, that's fine. But they do burrow
Speaker 2: into figs and live inside a fig.
Speaker 3: Right, this is correct. And one thing people may not
Speaker 3: know is that the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration,
Speaker 3: the two entities that control our food quality, have allowances
Speaker 3: for numbers of insect parts because it's just impossible to
Speaker 3: exclude them. I mean, that's how ubiquitous insects are. And
Speaker 3: so even if you're not eating a fig, you're probably
Speaker 3: another insect somewhere during your day. I had let us
Speaker 3: on my sandwich. I've probably had an ephig. I don't know.
Speaker 3: The only pollinators of figs are these tiny wasps that
Speaker 3: have developed this, you know, mutualistic relationship with figs, and
Speaker 3: it's ridiculously complex. There's a great many species. Some figs
Speaker 3: do not require pollination, by the way, but for those
Speaker 3: that do, there's not only the fig wasp, but there's
Speaker 3: other wasps that are parasitoids of the fig wasp, and
Speaker 3: probably parasitoids are the parasitoids. Wouldn't surprise me either. I mean,
Speaker 3: a lot of this hasn't been completely figured out yet.
Speaker 3: Unless an insect is of economic importance in one way
Speaker 3: or another, there's not a lot of funds to study them.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of what we know we owe
Speaker 3: to really curious and determined scientists that said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to find funding to do this because it interests me.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a shortage of that kind of money
Speaker 3: to do these kinds of things, but that we desperately
Speaker 3: need that.
Speaker 2: Okay, But one thing they have figured out is some
Speaker 2: hot ass goss about how figs are made, a tradition
Speaker 2: that goes back evolutionarily about eighty million years. Are you
Speaker 2: ready for this? Okay, So a fig is an inside
Speaker 2: out flower. Let's start by just trying to cope with
Speaker 2: that fact right there, and then a lady wasp digs
Speaker 2: into it via the bottom of the figs little buttle,
Speaker 2: and in so doing she rips her wings and off,
Speaker 2: and then uses blades on her face to worm through
Speaker 2: the fig, pollinating the FIG's internal blossom. And then she dies.
Speaker 2: She dies in there. She's like, okay, cool, I'm done here.
Speaker 2: And then her baby's hatch and the males of them
Speaker 2: have no wings. They they don't need them. They don't
Speaker 2: need them. They mature. They impregnate a female wasp before
Speaker 2: she hatches. A fig wasp born knocked up. Can you
Speaker 2: imagine you're born pregnant from some wingless creep who is
Speaker 2: also your soulmate, and he's like, I gotta split, bitch,
Speaker 2: and he digs a tunnel out. But once he's out,
Speaker 2: he's like, fuck, I just remember now I have wings,
Speaker 2: And you're like, thanks, dude, I got a motor. You
Speaker 2: go out his tunnel, You take some of the pollen
Speaker 2: with you, all over your pregnant newborn body into the
Speaker 2: butthole of another fig, which once again is an inverted flower.
Speaker 2: Now before you dramatically wretch at the thought of a fig.
Speaker 2: Apparently the figs were like, this is a convenient system
Speaker 2: for us, it's probably bad pr though. So figs make
Speaker 2: an enzyme called fichin that digests the dead wasps. So vegans,
Speaker 2: you're pretty much in the clear. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: There's so many alive things all over everything we eat.
Speaker 2: Even when we try our plant based best, everything's crawling
Speaker 2: with something else. Oh and the crunchy things in a fig,
Speaker 2: you're an avery gonna believe what they are? You're ready
Speaker 2: for this. They're seeds. They're just seeds. Just calm down,
Speaker 2: enjoy the fig. You know, when it comes to getting say,
Speaker 2: bigger and bolder. What is kind of next up the
Speaker 2: line if we're going from these fairy wasps to fig wasps?
Speaker 2: And then what are some of the ones that we
Speaker 2: commonly see?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well, if we upgrades to the size where
Speaker 3: your naked eye is going to spot the thing. Mud
Speaker 3: daubers are a really good example of a solitary wasp
Speaker 3: that we see frequently. And if we don't see the wasp,
Speaker 3: we certainly see their nests, which look like somebody just
Speaker 3: threw a claw of mud up under your head or whatever. Right,
Speaker 3: And so that's most of those are the creation of
Speaker 3: one female wasp and so she, you know, builds one
Speaker 3: cell of mud after another, and in each she stars
Speaker 3: spiders that she gathers, paralyzes and sticks in there, and
Speaker 3: then seals the mud cell and the larva that hatches
Speaker 3: from the egg that she laid in there, then consumes
Speaker 3: that stash of still living paralyzed spiders.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that is so hardcore. I didn't realize
Speaker 2: that mud daubers were making pantrees full of dead spiders.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, is that right? Mud splats are acting as pantries
Speaker 2: full of dead spiders? Or is it juicier than that?
Speaker 2: Do the larva parasitize it while it's living or is
Speaker 2: it dead in there?
Speaker 3: No, they're they're they're living. You know, they don't have
Speaker 3: cold storage. And most of these, you know, they're susceptible
Speaker 3: to the same mules and fungiant things that are bread
Speaker 3: in the fridges and stuff, so they're paralyzed so they
Speaker 3: stay fresh basically. And tomologist will tell you insects do
Speaker 3: not have pain receptors, so it's not they're not feeling nothing.
Speaker 3: That doesn't make it any less gruesome, I don't think.
Speaker 2: But right, are they eggs inside the body of the
Speaker 2: spider or.
Speaker 3: They're just they're just feeding exteriorly. When they're done, there
Speaker 3: might be a few legs left or something.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. And then okay, so mud daubers, we might
Speaker 2: see clods of mud inside. No big deal, it's a
Speaker 2: tomb for a living zombie like mummy. Okay, no biggie.
Speaker 2: What other ones do you think that people commonly see.
Speaker 2: I don't know the difference necessarily between a wasp and
Speaker 2: a hornet and a yellow jacket, So what's the difference
Speaker 2: for those guys?
Speaker 3: Well, okay, if you want to talk about social species again,
Speaker 3: then yellow jackets are primarily what we would call boreal insects.
Speaker 3: That is that they're northern in their distribution. Some of
Speaker 3: them now are Holarctic. They either exist on all the
Speaker 3: contents or they've been introduced from one to the other,
Speaker 3: so that's the northern hemisphere. Basically, the further south you go,
Speaker 3: yellow jackets start to peter out a bit, and then
Speaker 3: they're replaced by paper wasps, which are the ones that
Speaker 3: look a little more slender, and they build paper combs
Speaker 3: that have no covering on them, and so those you
Speaker 3: often see under the eaves, along with the undopbern.
Speaker 2: Nests Okay, oh yeah, those are the ones that you
Speaker 2: can see the comb They look almost like those plants
Speaker 2: that people get really afraid of, right, you know those
Speaker 2: plants that have holes and people are like, that's my trickoocophobia, Right,
Speaker 2: we heard of that. Okay, So this is called triplephobia.
Speaker 2: And I just found out that two scientists, Arnold Wilkins
Speaker 2: and Jeff Cole, are studying the visual stress related to it,
Speaker 2: so they may be the world's leading tripologists. And they
Speaker 2: put out a twenty fifteen paper titled Assessment of Triplephobia
Speaker 2: and Analysis of its Visual Precipitation. They found that seventeen
Speaker 2: to eighteen percent of the population has a fear of
Speaker 2: clusters of holes around objects, so it's pretty normal, and
Speaker 2: that images in the natural world just don't have that
Speaker 2: characteristic unless they are dangerous animals or potentially contagious skin diseases,
Speaker 2: So it's in built in us. Or maybe you're afraid
Speaker 2: of the triple lenses on iPhone eleven pro cameras. Those
Speaker 2: cost one thousand dollars. Also very scary. On the flip side,
Speaker 2: if you're all about gazing at bubbling pancakes or lotus
Speaker 2: blossom pods. You may enjoy the subreddit tripophobia, which is
Speaker 2: really a tripophiliac paradise. So many pictures or you know what,
Speaker 2: You could just stare up at the open comb of
Speaker 2: a paper wasp's nest. Okay, so those are paper wasps. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then what about the one that make what looks
Speaker 2: like a papery beehive?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's those. Those are aerial yellow jackets. And even
Speaker 3: though even though we call one of them the bald
Speaker 3: faced hornet, it's still a yellow jacket. Is just a
Speaker 3: larger one, and it's black and white instead of black
Speaker 3: and yellow.
Speaker 2: Oh why do they evolve to be striped in black
Speaker 2: and yellow so much? Or these stark colors.
Speaker 3: That's something called apo semitism. Mm hmm, I think I'm
Speaker 3: pronouncing that correctly. Or more colloquially, they're called warning colors,
Speaker 3: so their enemies learn to associate those bold color patterns
Speaker 3: with the fact that they can stain.
Speaker 2: Got it, Okay, makes sense. It's like a caution tape. Essentially,
Speaker 2: it's like, do mess with my butt, I will hurt you,
Speaker 2: which makes sense. If my butt could hurt people, I
Speaker 2: don't want to let them know. Don't touch my butt.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hurt you with it. If they sting you.
Speaker 2: The ones that can, will they die? Do their organs
Speaker 2: get ripped out like a bee or No?
Speaker 3: There are some tropical social wasps, I believe, and some
Speaker 3: yellow jackets that have barbed stingers, and so yes, sometimes
Speaker 3: they lodge in you. That's not something that happens every time,
Speaker 3: whereas with honey bees it pretty much is once they
Speaker 3: plant that stinger, that's the end of the deal. But yes,
Speaker 3: occasionally for some yellow jackets and other social wasps, they
Speaker 3: do have that kind of evisceration that comes with stinging.
Speaker 2: Oof. Now, okay, I feel like when we hear hornet's nests,
Speaker 2: we think like angrier and angrier. I almost feel like,
Speaker 2: if you had to go do like a family feud style,
Speaker 2: I'm going to pull one hundred people. We could put
Speaker 2: on a list like bumblebees are the nicest, and then
Speaker 2: honey bees, and then wasps, and then yellow jackets, and
Speaker 2: then hornets and then murder hornets. You know, we would
Speaker 2: like give this a range, and I feel like that's
Speaker 2: probably not accurate. But do they get bigger and bigger
Speaker 2: as we go, and do they get angry or angry
Speaker 2: or the bigger they get, or is that just total myth?
Speaker 3: Again, We have only one species of hornet in the
Speaker 3: US that's established, and that's the European hornet, which, as
Speaker 3: the name suggests, was introduced from Europe. They're basically Eurasian.
Speaker 3: All the hornets, the different species exist over over on
Speaker 3: the other side of the pond, so to speak. And
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I have come across the
Speaker 3: nest of European hornets once. It was in a hollow tree.
Speaker 3: I got up in there grill. There's a little, little,
Speaker 3: small entrance to the nest. I got pretty close, and
Speaker 3: you know, they showed no aggression to me whatsoever. If
Speaker 3: you linger in the flight path of hornets or yellowjackets
Speaker 3: coming and going from the nest, eventually you know they're
Speaker 3: going to kind of be annoyed at you, I think,
Speaker 3: and they'll at least give you a you know, a
Speaker 3: loop to loop warning that you know, maybe auto move
Speaker 3: your butt there. Yeah, But basically, I mean, yeah, I've
Speaker 3: walked right up to a ball faced hornet nest and
Speaker 3: watch them put paper on the nest and stuff. And
Speaker 3: I don't stay there too long. Yeah, but unless you
Speaker 3: shake vigorously right, I think you're okay.
Speaker 2: Now what about I'm sorry I got to ask you
Speaker 2: about murder hornets, and I know you heaved a heavy sigh,
Speaker 2: like a just a heavy hearted exasperation. In all insect
Speaker 2: experts these days, murder hornets obviously got their name kind
Speaker 2: of colloquially. But what are they? How aggressive are they?
Speaker 2: How many are there? What's the deal?
Speaker 3: Well, I want to preface this by saying, once again,
Speaker 3: it's a human problem less than it is a wasp problem.
Speaker 3: We seem to have decided that are global commerce, that
Speaker 3: one of the acceptable risks of that is introducing species
Speaker 3: that don't belong here. They got the name murder hornet
Speaker 3: not because they can murder people. I mean that in
Speaker 3: some extreme incident, I suppose that is possible. But what
Speaker 3: they do do is they raid honeybee hives, and they
Speaker 3: can take out an entire hive of honeybees because they're
Speaker 3: three times the size of the honeybee. They're enormous, They're
Speaker 3: twice the size of a yellow jacket at least, and
Speaker 3: they just fly in, you know, crush the heads of
Speaker 3: the guard bees, go into the nest, keep crushing workers,
Speaker 3: and then they go and pill for the larvae and
Speaker 3: the honey to take back to their own nest. And
Speaker 3: so that's how they got the name murder hornets for
Speaker 3: the murder of honeybee hives, not the murder of people.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the first thing. And secondly, it was
Speaker 3: a really irresponsible term for anybody to create and as
Speaker 3: typical clickbait kind of thing, now right, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: typical media behavior.
Speaker 2: And do they pose a big threat to apiculture here
Speaker 2: in the continental US?
Speaker 3: Potentially, but again they're not. You know, one of the
Speaker 3: problems that was created by this is that in the
Speaker 3: monitoring for this species it's Vespa mandarinia, by the way,
Speaker 3: is the scientific name of this hornet. In the course
Speaker 3: of monitoring, they're they're monitoring in places this thing is
Speaker 3: never going to show up. It's never going to live
Speaker 3: in Texas, it's too hot, you know, it's never going
Speaker 3: to live in the southeast, but the northern tier of
Speaker 3: states and especially in the Pacific Northwest, where you've got
Speaker 3: so many ports where they can enter. You know, yeah,
Speaker 3: you should be monitoring for these things. And yes, there
Speaker 3: is a risk they could become established if we don't
Speaker 3: start inspecting cargo better. If we don't think about maybe
Speaker 3: assessing some kind of tax for invasive species and this
Speaker 3: kind of thing so that we can deal with it
Speaker 3: if it does happen. So these are again human problems.
Speaker 3: Washings are going to do wasp things, and you know,
Speaker 3: no matter where they are right And.
Speaker 2: While many folks think that they're darling precious North American
Speaker 2: honeybees need saving. They're invasive, but they have an incredible
Speaker 2: publicity team.
Speaker 3: The problem is with is mostly with feral colonies of
Speaker 3: honeybees that established in the wild and then start out
Speaker 3: competing native bee species. Shoot agriculture has its own lobby.
Speaker 3: It's going to get a lot of money from the government,
Speaker 3: a lot of subsidies. And you have migratory beekeeping. Now
Speaker 3: where beekeeper's truck. There are hives across the country depending
Speaker 3: on what crops need pollen ying, like almonds in California,
Speaker 3: they're your bees to pollinate. Those might have come from Michigan.
Speaker 2: Okay, story time. So one February I was stuck in
Speaker 2: a three hour traffic jam on the grape vine next
Speaker 2: to a mac truck carrying hundreds of box hives. And
Speaker 2: I get excited because bug and I rolled down the window,
Speaker 2: and I could hear and feel a really faint thrumb
Speaker 2: in the air from just millions of bees, and I thought,
Speaker 2: oh man, it's winter. Let those ladies rust. Also, the
Speaker 2: bees are so lucky they can pee anywhere they want,
Speaker 2: which on the grapevine I couldn't. It was too inconvenient
Speaker 2: for me. And what do wasps do ecologically? Tell us
Speaker 2: some of the wonderful things wasps are responsible for.
Speaker 3: Oh, they're pollinators as well. They're what you would call
Speaker 3: technically flower visitors because they're there for With the exception
Speaker 3: of the pollen wasps that I mentioned earlier, which are
Speaker 3: collecting pollen that they'll store for their larval offspring, wasps
Speaker 3: are there for nectar because the adult wasps need carbohydrates
Speaker 3: like like we do to fuel, you know, to give
Speaker 3: them energy, whereas the larval insect when it's growing up
Speaker 3: needs protein to grow on and go through metamorphosis. And so,
Speaker 3: of course of visiting flowers, wasps are gonna pull eight flowers.
Speaker 3: And by the way, some orchids depend on wasps for
Speaker 3: pollination to the extent that they mimic the female wasp
Speaker 3: and get the male to fornicate with them. I swear
Speaker 3: to God, I'm not making this up. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: in Europe and I think Australia and maybe South Africa,
Speaker 3: there's there's wasps that that are intimately literally intimately tied
Speaker 3: to orchids.
Speaker 2: Romantic. Can you imagine there's like a hot dog stand
Speaker 2: in the shape of your nude lover just waiting for you.
Speaker 2: I mean amazing. And then I have so many questions
Speaker 2: from listeners. Can I do a lightning round. We'll get
Speaker 2: through as many as we can.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: Oh. The other thing is is we don'ate to a
Speaker 2: charity of your choice, any any related charities. You don't
Speaker 2: have to sell me now. You can email it to
Speaker 2: me later if you feel like it.
Speaker 3: Well, I would give a shout out to the Xerxes
Speaker 3: Society XRF.
Speaker 2: See yes, I know them very well. Yes Xerxes. Of course, yes,
Speaker 2: I will shout them out and we'll give them a donation.
Speaker 2: They're awesome. I have downloaded their guides on what to
Speaker 2: plant in my backyard for native pollinators. Yeah, I love them. Okay, good?
Speaker 2: Oh sweet? So yeah, a donation went to the Xerxes
Speaker 2: Society and that was made possible by sponsors of the pod,
Speaker 2: who you may hear about now, So.
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Speaker 2: Okay, your wasp like, diverse, wondrous and pointed questions. Okay,
Speaker 2: lightning ground a lot of questions. The most frequent question
Speaker 2: I got is why are they so Dix? We covered it,
Speaker 2: We're good. Kelly and Dixon asks what's the deal with
Speaker 2: wasps recognizing faces? Can they really do this? And if so,
Speaker 2: what facial features can they recognize or differentiate? I wonder,
Speaker 2: I wonder if wearing a mask these days helps it
Speaker 2: all or not.
Speaker 3: Wasps canc Well, it's been demonstrated that paper wasps can
Speaker 3: recognize colony members from their facial patterns. Now, they can't
Speaker 3: recognize humans as far as I know, Okay, but the
Speaker 3: benefit of that is that it is part of the
Speaker 3: social order.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Paper wasps don't have a queen in the sense of
Speaker 3: a physically different female then, like you know, yellowjackets and
Speaker 3: hornets have a physically larger female that does nothing but
Speaker 3: produce eggs. But paper wasps are a little bit lower
Speaker 3: on the evolutionary scale, and so all the females are
Speaker 3: capable of producing eggs if they're not bullied by the
Speaker 3: dominant female, And so they learn to recognize each other
Speaker 3: and act accordingly.
Speaker 2: So a wasp nest can produce like four thousand new queens.
Speaker 2: And in the fall, when the temperatures dip and all
Speaker 2: the workers die off, the queens are like sia. They
Speaker 2: go find an abandoned animal burrow or a hollow tree,
Speaker 2: or like a junkyard car, and they survive the winter
Speaker 2: because they have an anti freeze compound in their blood.
Speaker 2: So then they build their own nest. When it warms up,
Speaker 2: they make a bunch of new workers, and the cycle
Speaker 2: starts again in the spring. Of course, that's the social wasps.
Speaker 2: Some queens they do get out. Sounds like a very
Speaker 2: brutal version of some of our high schools speriences. Now,
Speaker 2: speaking of painful external pressures, patron Rich Flight asked what's
Speaker 2: the deal with the skinny waste? What's their diet plan?
Speaker 2: And this question was also on the ganglia of Megan
Speaker 2: Walker and first time question askers Lily Taggart and Tad
Speaker 2: Mortimer and a few other folks want to know what
Speaker 2: is the point of the wasp? Wasst the insect one,
Speaker 2: not the nineteenth century fashion one? And how do the
Speaker 2: lower bits of their body not just fall off?
Speaker 3: This is really bizarre. I had forgotten this until I
Speaker 3: was researching the book. But the abdomen of the wasp
Speaker 3: actually starts on the rear end of the thorax. It's
Speaker 3: called the propodium, and so that's the first dorsal segment
Speaker 3: of the abdomen, and so everything posterior to that is
Speaker 3: called the gaster.
Speaker 2: So in general, that teeny tiny tube waste of some
Speaker 2: hymenoptera like ants and wasps, is called a petiole, and
Speaker 2: their shapely rump area is the guest, which you're welcome
Speaker 2: to call yours from now on.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I was looking at pictures of paper wasps nests and
Speaker 2: how they hang from a cord like a chandelier filled
Speaker 2: with wasps, and it turns out that that stock at
Speaker 2: the top also called a petiole.
Speaker 3: Okay, well why and not all wasps have that thin waist,
Speaker 3: like the softlies and horntails, which are more primitive wasps
Speaker 3: if you want to frame it that way, still have
Speaker 3: a cigar shaped joint to the thorax, a broader joint
Speaker 3: to the thorax. But when you have that hinged abdomen,
Speaker 3: it gives you great flexibility when you're trying to sting
Speaker 3: your host.
Speaker 2: So it's like a Gooseneck lamp. Yeah, oh, it's a.
Speaker 3: Good Oh that's an excellent analogy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why, thank you. I hope never to encounter one
Speaker 2: up close, but I commend it. That makes tons of sense.
Speaker 2: So do they have their guts? Is there like one
Speaker 2: little intestine that goes from the top to the bottom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an esophagus, and then the basically the alimentary
Speaker 3: canal well runs through the thorax. The thorax is almost
Speaker 3: all muscle, by the way. It's what operates the wings
Speaker 3: and the legs, and so it's a really dense muscle structure.
Speaker 3: And then the abdomen houses the stomach and the reproductive
Speaker 3: and excretory organs.
Speaker 2: Ooh, that is amazing. I've always wondered what's in there
Speaker 2: because it's such a little pipe cleaner tube.
Speaker 1: Ooh.
Speaker 2: Also, did you ever wonder why a Vespa scooter is
Speaker 2: called a Vespa? I did, so I decided to google
Speaker 2: it for several hours. So upon seeing a redesign of
Speaker 2: the little motorbike, which has a front part with two
Speaker 2: handlebars and a thin floorboard and then a juicy badonk
Speaker 2: that houses the motor one of the engineers said in
Speaker 2: Italian that fricking thing looks like a wasp? Are you
Speaker 2: kidding me?
Speaker 1: All of it?
Speaker 2: And so Vespa means wasp in Italiano and they've been
Speaker 2: buzzing around the world ever since then. And I thought,
Speaker 2: God damn, that must be where the cocktail Vesper gets
Speaker 2: its name. But nope, the vodka and jin martini with
Speaker 2: lilay is called a vesper, but it comes from the
Speaker 2: word for evening, not because a giant, freezing cold chalice
Speaker 2: of straight green alcohol packs a bit of a sting.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to first time question asker G
Speaker 2: Zero Piochoki wants to know how is it that wasps
Speaker 2: and bees are so similar? Look so similar? But wasps
Speaker 2: have evolved to consume meat while bees are content just
Speaker 2: to rub their butts in flour dust. Why do some
Speaker 2: wasps eat meat? I know when I used to be
Speaker 2: a caterer when there were yellowjackets, it'd be like, just
Speaker 2: throw a piece of ham over there to divert them.
Speaker 2: What's up with that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: You know again, you know the adult wasps are not
Speaker 3: consuming protein matter, they're taking it back for their offspring.
Speaker 3: Amazing and so yeah, so though I've watched a yellow
Speaker 3: jacket cut a piece out of my turkey sandwich and
Speaker 3: fly off with it. It's like, you know the one.
Speaker 3: By the way, one thing I want to caution all
Speaker 3: your listeners about is serving beverages outdoors. Do not serve
Speaker 3: them in cans or opaque bottles or glassware. You can
Speaker 3: get a yellowjacker crawling in there, and if you get
Speaker 3: stuck on your tongue. You know, even if you're not allergic,
Speaker 3: that can be a life threatening experience. You know, serve
Speaker 3: your beverages and clear glasses.
Speaker 2: So about a million people go to the er every
Speaker 2: year for insects stings, but most are just fine. But
Speaker 2: about sixty to seventy people die every year from allergic
Speaker 2: reactions to stinging bugs. So just look for symptoms like tingling, sensations, dizziness, hives,
Speaker 2: the skin kind swelling of your lips or tongue, maybe
Speaker 2: having a hard time breathing or wheezing, or if someone
Speaker 2: just straight up passes out no matter why. You should
Speaker 2: probably go to the er for that last one anyway.
Speaker 2: But one of Eric's pals, he says, you may have
Speaker 2: heard of him.
Speaker 3: Justin Schmidt, the King of sting. He's called, who created
Speaker 3: the Schmidt pain Index of insects stings. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: He occasionally will self inflict a sting upon himself and
Speaker 3: then describe it and rate it on a scale of
Speaker 3: one to four for being the worst thing and one,
Speaker 3: you know, being the barely detectable. Basically, a honeybee is
Speaker 3: a number two on his scale, by the way, but
Speaker 3: he found out that tarantula hawks, which they need their
Speaker 3: venom to paralyze their tarantula prey. I mean, you've got
Speaker 3: to have a pretty wicked sting, I would think to
Speaker 3: paralyze a tarantula anyway. Yeah, but it turns out that
Speaker 3: it's absolutely excruciatingly painful if you get stung by one
Speaker 3: of those things. But in about three minutes, you're fine
Speaker 3: and it doesn't do any damage. Oh, it's totally tailored
Speaker 3: to the prey item thereafter. And that's for solitary wasps,
Speaker 3: that's the deal. They're telling their venom to a specific host.
Speaker 3: They're not worried about self defense.
Speaker 2: So for solitary wasps, their venom is really pray specific. Now,
Speaker 2: what about the city wasps, the ones who live in
Speaker 2: big papery buildings on the side of your house or
Speaker 2: underground with thousands of other ones and they just love
Speaker 2: love the hustle bustle of the nest life.
Speaker 3: But for social wasps, that's another story. I mean there,
Speaker 3: that is the purpose of their sting is, you know,
Speaker 3: get the hell away from our nest. We got babies
Speaker 3: in there, get out. Yeah, and they will, you know,
Speaker 3: they can route a bear out of their nests.
Speaker 2: So what's the highest on the Schmidt index you've ever
Speaker 2: been stung?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Wow? Uh, somewhere around a three. Probably a paper wasp
Speaker 3: got me once and that was pretty painful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm mer. Mycologist Terry McGlenn talked to me about
Speaker 2: his bullet ant. Yeah, bite did not feel good a sting.
Speaker 2: Will Eric ever be sticking his face into a nest
Speaker 2: for YouTube clout?
Speaker 3: My feeling about myself is that if it ever becomes
Speaker 3: about me, I need to find another line of work
Speaker 3: because I want it to be about the message. And
Speaker 3: my message is that you know, these things deserve an
Speaker 3: appreciation and respect that we're not giving them right now. Right.
Speaker 2: Korene Wilminster wants to know what's up with wasp venom
Speaker 2: and cancer treatments. Have you heard anything about their venom
Speaker 2: being heroically used?
Speaker 3: There's certainly research going on. There was some kind of
Speaker 3: Brazilian wasp. I think that shows promise in that regard
Speaker 3: that it targets specifically some protein or something that's specific
Speaker 3: to cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.
Speaker 2: So one twenty seventeen Brazilian study titled PHOSPHATITL Serine, Lipids
Speaker 2: and membrane order precisely regulate the activity of polybia mp
Speaker 2: one peptide. Sure found that a toxin in a species
Speaker 2: of South American wasp targets cancer cells will sparing healthy cells.
Speaker 2: So the wasp venom contains a toxin called np one,
Speaker 2: which globs on to fat molecules on the surface of
Speaker 2: cancer cells, making the tumor cells leak out what they need.
Speaker 2: But in healthy cells a lot of the business is
Speaker 2: on the inside of the cell, so the mp one
Speaker 2: doesn't affect it. But hey, don't go getting stung as medicine.
Speaker 2: We are not there yet. Also, don't grind up oak
Speaker 2: galls and shove them up your cooter. Some folks do
Speaker 2: take tree gulls, which are created by flies or mites
Speaker 2: or yes wasps, and they pulverize them to market as
Speaker 2: a tunnel tightener, if you will. Not a good idea,
Speaker 2: not medically sound. Also sounds a bit grainy to be honest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an excellent point. We're not we're not
Speaker 3: funding basic research the way we used to, and so
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of money to go into this
Speaker 3: kind of thing. And we haven't even scratched the surface
Speaker 3: of all these insect based chemicals that are unique to
Speaker 3: insects that could have really impactful implications in medicine and
Speaker 3: other technology for that matter.
Speaker 2: Thanks in advance, wasps, you're millions of years of evolution.
Speaker 2: Your stingy butts might be saving ours. Who knows. Daisy
Speaker 2: Goldstein Cross had a great question. I wanted to know.
Speaker 2: Do they ever use materials besides wood pulp to make
Speaker 2: those hanging paper nests? Like plastic? It's so beautiful and
Speaker 2: they've used it in some collages before.
Speaker 3: Do they do paper wasps ever use anything other than
Speaker 3: wood pulp? Basically, any woody cellulose source is something they
Speaker 3: can use. Some of the social wasps also build mud
Speaker 3: nests rather than paper nests. Basically, any cellulose source, woody
Speaker 3: cellulose store source, this is something that they can use.
Speaker 3: It need not be from an old fence post or something,
Speaker 3: but you often see them gathering material from sources like that.
Speaker 2: I never thought of how we use wood pulp for paper,
Speaker 2: and so do they? They just chew up wood, they
Speaker 2: mix it with spit. We could probably do that firs
Speaker 2: stationary if we weren't so lazy. Now, A lot of
Speaker 2: you look at you patrons Sarah Van Deventer, Ashley Conan,
Speaker 2: Lisa Burbage, Charlotte Flucker, Guard, Kelly Simon, Meghan Walker and
Speaker 2: You're young have gardens and needed advice on how to
Speaker 2: coexist with wasps, as did Kimberly Hoffman wants to know
Speaker 2: how in the heck can I create a pollinator friendly
Speaker 2: property including wasps without having them make nests on the house.
Speaker 2: Is there some sort of box I could make for
Speaker 2: them to have a safe home and reduce negative human
Speaker 2: interactions with wasps? And actually another great question to pair
Speaker 2: with that is Katie Spina wants to know do the
Speaker 2: fake wasps nests work to prevent them from making a
Speaker 2: nest near your house?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: The answer to that is no, Okay, yeah, don't bother
Speaker 3: with paper bags and what have you. Don't bother painting
Speaker 3: the underside of your eas skyblue either. Basically, our architecture
Speaker 3: mimics where they nest naturally, which is like on cliff
Speaker 3: faces and under rock ledges and things like that, and
Speaker 3: so your house is just a big cliff to them,
Speaker 3: and of course they got a nest there, and you know,
Speaker 3: if if they're in a place where you can't tolerate them.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, remember I just said we had
Speaker 3: a nest in the corner of our doorframe here that
Speaker 3: I didn't notice for two weeks. Just let them do
Speaker 3: their thing. Tell people, you tell your guests that come over, Okay,
Speaker 3: you know, please be careful of that. I'm I'm supporting biodiversity.
Speaker 3: I say that about our messy house too, or not
Speaker 3: or not messy house keepers were promoting biodiversity exactly. But
Speaker 3: my wife is going to kill me when she hears
Speaker 3: me say that.
Speaker 2: So much biodiversity on dirty dishes. You're doing great, everyone,
Speaker 2: Wait where were we yes outdoors?
Speaker 3: Oh? How can you create a pollinator friendly guard? Well,
Speaker 3: if you plant for bees, you're going to get wasps
Speaker 3: by default. Anyway. You know, if you have a vegetable garden,
Speaker 3: you're going to have a few aphids. Well, they're going
Speaker 3: to attract little wasps that sting them and lay an
Speaker 3: egg in their little aphid, and the ephed becomes an
Speaker 3: aphan mummy, and then the wasp eventually cuts its way
Speaker 3: out through a little hatch that it looks exactly like
Speaker 3: a round door coming out of aphid or what used
Speaker 3: to be the aphed. So yeah, just okay, learn and
Speaker 3: celebrate these little things when you find them. If you
Speaker 3: put up you know, b hotels or be condos that
Speaker 3: are called sometimes wasps solitary wasp will nest in those
Speaker 3: as well, and welcome them because they're taking care of
Speaker 3: pest caterpillars in your garden and other critters that might
Speaker 3: be gnawing on your veggies.
Speaker 2: Also, when it comes to be hotels, do some research
Speaker 2: and make sure you're getting ones that have removable tubes
Speaker 2: so you can replace or clean them because things get dirty,
Speaker 2: Mites get in there, and you want your little pollinator
Speaker 2: babies to be healthy, so research cleaning your bird feeders too.
Speaker 2: Did you know dirty ones can transmit dirdy disease? Also,
Speaker 2: I neglected to mention in the Wildlife Ecology episode that
Speaker 2: you should do some research on bears in your area too,
Speaker 2: because they can be a tra did to bird feeders
Speaker 2: and that is how bears get labeled as a nuisance
Speaker 2: and shot. And I just want to say thanks Ashley
Speaker 2: the Oologist on Twitter. You can follow her at the
Speaker 2: Angryologist for worldwide life tips. And yes, consider that some
Speaker 2: native wasps are just out there like bouncers in your garden.
Speaker 2: Eighty six and some little critters munching on your lettuce
Speaker 2: Ooh thanks, wasps going around doing some cleanup for us. Also,
Speaker 2: seguany Dana is up in Maine and says I've seen
Speaker 2: a couple of the giant echuinumon ichnemon wasps females I believe,
Speaker 2: she says, around my house, and they are beautiful. Can
Speaker 2: you please talk a little bit about them and their
Speaker 2: life cycle? And yeah, these wasps, I've seen them before.
Speaker 2: I can't remember how to pronounce them. But what's what
Speaker 2: their life cycle?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know you have right? Is ichnuman wasp?
Speaker 2: I see hn eumo and certainly google these mostly non
Speaker 2: stinging critters who are like you will know me buy my.
Speaker 3: Butt Wand they're now being called Darwin wasps by some
Speaker 3: of the experts on that group.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Now they're thinking there might be as many as a
Speaker 3: million ichnoment wasp species alone that we've only described a
Speaker 3: small fraction of those in the thousands. But anyway, these guys, yeah,
Speaker 3: there are the females. Rather, their body is maybe a
Speaker 3: couple of inches long, but they're ovipositors, they're egg laying
Speaker 3: organs are are streaming out the back end adding another
Speaker 3: four inches to the to the wasp. And so when
Speaker 3: these things fly by, it looks like one of those
Speaker 3: sky riders or something, you know. And what they're using
Speaker 3: that long ovipositor to do is to drill into trees
Speaker 3: or you know, dead or dying trees that are inhabited
Speaker 3: by another wasp called the horntail wasp, and it's grubs
Speaker 3: are bores in dead and dying trees. Somehow, the ignoman
Speaker 3: is able to kind of like divine you know, these
Speaker 3: like like those old water which is you know, divine
Speaker 3: where this larva is inside this tree. And then she
Speaker 3: arches up her abdomen and flips that o a poster
Speaker 3: underneath her and drills down to reach that grub, lays
Speaker 3: an egg on it, and then leaves the scene and
Speaker 3: her own larva will then feed on the horntail larva.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, drama, so much drama. Also, Eric's book Wasps,
Speaker 2: The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect, is so pictoral
Speaker 2: and beautiful and the cover features these two delicate orange
Speaker 2: and black wasps that are huddled on a flower stalk,
Speaker 2: seemingly having some kind of business meeting. Does he have
Speaker 2: one wasp? That he just can't stop staring at. Does
Speaker 2: he have a secret favorite? Do you have a favorite wasp?
Speaker 3: Do I have a favorite one? Well, not anymore, not
Speaker 3: After learning about these wasps that I was less familiar with,
Speaker 3: I have to say that I have a true, honest
Speaker 3: appreciation of all of them. Now I do like the
Speaker 3: colorful ones, of course, the cuckoo wasps and velvet ants
Speaker 3: and things like that that are either you know, metallic
Speaker 3: in the case of cuckoo wasps, or you know, bright
Speaker 3: fuzzy critters. But the wasp that that is on the
Speaker 3: cover are called a mafula. And I having to be
Speaker 3: good friends with with a world authority on these, and
Speaker 3: he just wrote a new scientific key to them, describing
Speaker 3: a couple of new species in fact, and the ones
Speaker 3: on the cover are sleeping. Believe it about wasps sleep.
Speaker 3: And in the case of these thread wasted amophilas, they
Speaker 3: grip some little twigger stem in their jaws and then
Speaker 3: prop their body at a forty five degree angle and
Speaker 3: spend the night that way. And sometimes they gather in
Speaker 3: loose clusters and they can look like a little cluster
Speaker 3: of you know, seed pods or something. But yeah, if
Speaker 3: you go around a field at dusk or something, and
Speaker 3: you look closely, you might find them settling down for
Speaker 3: the night.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, gorgeous. I mean, is there a good
Speaker 2: way to start going on a wasp safari? If you
Speaker 2: want to let them into your heart?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question. Just you go out of
Speaker 3: your house, yeah, or go up into the attic. There
Speaker 3: might be a mud dabber nesting up there, for all
Speaker 3: we know. A lot of by the way, a lot
Speaker 3: of things I see on social media are of postings
Speaker 3: of wasps that found their way indoors, And often this
Speaker 3: is because they nested indoors and then the offspring are
Speaker 3: now emerging inside rather than outside. So you know, people
Speaker 3: often just have you know, are just astonished to find
Speaker 3: this weird mishmash of of things in their window track
Speaker 3: or their wind chimes.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they up in the wind chimes. Gosh. I love
Speaker 2: the idea that just we're it was kicking around walking
Speaker 2: around with a cup of tea. No idea that there
Speaker 2: are semi alive spiders that are mummified in the water
Speaker 2: like so cool Ethan Chapman asked, just how smart are they?
Speaker 2: I've here they're much more intelligent than bees and other
Speaker 2: stingy boys. And Christina Weaver wants to know. I want
Speaker 2: to know how the parasitic wasp mind control works. How
Speaker 2: do they do it?
Speaker 3: Oh? Wow? What to unpack there?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: Okay, buddy?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: All right, Well here's here's the thing. I think one
Speaker 3: of the reasons I think we kind of hold this
Speaker 3: latent envy of wasps that they're maddeningly efficient at exploiting
Speaker 3: our every weakness and they do it without this burden
Speaker 3: of ethics and etiquette and moral compass that that we
Speaker 3: have to deal with. And so here they're ragingly successful
Speaker 3: with stimulus response and instinct, and here we are with
Speaker 3: these big brains and we can't remember where we parked
Speaker 3: the car, and you had a sand wasp female can
Speaker 3: find her nest in a dude, all right, So you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: they have a way of making us look stupid. But instinct,
Speaker 3: I think, is a lot more plastic than we used
Speaker 3: to think it is, and so it has some malleability.
Speaker 3: And wasps still have to make choices and things, and
Speaker 3: sometimes those choices are evolutionarily successful, and sometimes they're not,
Speaker 3: just like any other organism, So I think, are they
Speaker 3: intelligent only as much as they have to be, And
Speaker 3: I think that applies to just about you know, every animal.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no waste in nature. Everything is just
Speaker 3: the point it needs to be to survive. When we
Speaker 3: throw in our very rapid changes to the landscape, that
Speaker 3: makes it a little bit harder for them to succeed.
Speaker 3: Now changing gears completely to the zombie wasp kind of thing, well,
Speaker 3: our definition of vene is changing a lot. It used
Speaker 3: to be kind of a well is it a lethal
Speaker 3: thing or is it a toxin? And if so, what
Speaker 3: kind of toxin? Well, basically, a venom now is anything
Speaker 3: that changes the impacts the host in one fashion or another,
Speaker 3: and that in the case of most wasps, it's it's
Speaker 3: either partial, temporary, or complete paralysis of the host. But
Speaker 3: in the case of some of these wasps, especially Braconids
Speaker 3: and Ignomens, which are very closely related groups, they also
Speaker 3: have a virus that is peculiar to them that the
Speaker 3: female injects when she lays her egg, and she may
Speaker 3: inject a mild or some kind of venom that also
Speaker 3: influences the host in some way or makes it easier
Speaker 3: for the virus to do its thing. Which is to basically, yeah,
Speaker 3: mind control the brain of the host to to bend
Speaker 3: its will to facilitate the wasp's offspring. And so when
Speaker 3: in the case of some caterpillars are in one case
Speaker 3: a ladybug parasitoid, the host survives the parasitic experience and
Speaker 3: winds up hovering over the pupa stage of the wasp
Speaker 3: and is responsive to stimuli in a defensive fashion and
Speaker 3: is thus a kind of brain controlled guardian, robotic guardian
Speaker 3: of its own parasitoid.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, I mean, what a beautiful thing though. I
Speaker 2: mean that is just evolution years and years and years
Speaker 2: and years. So just to think of how many iterations
Speaker 2: to get the right type of neurotoxin that would work
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: You know, Oh, there's wasps that have Rube Goldberg life cycles.
Speaker 3: It's just insane where they don't even attack the host directly,
Speaker 3: they attack its host and won't complete their life cycle
Speaker 3: unless the intended host or intended parasitoid takes the host
Speaker 3: is uneli.
Speaker 2: If you need a new genre of horror or suspense
Speaker 2: to get into, may I suggest reading about parasitoid wasps
Speaker 2: for hours, as I have just done past two am
Speaker 2: so many species, so many stories, so many victims. It's bananas, okay,
Speaker 2: really quick. There are these earthly beings called jewel wasps
Speaker 2: that are gorgeous and metallic, and they can use their
Speaker 2: stingers to essentially do brain surgery on their cockroach hosts,
Speaker 2: and they feel around with their stingers inside of its
Speaker 2: head and inject venom into very specific regions. And their
Speaker 2: venom does things like simulate a flood of neurochemicals that
Speaker 2: makes the cockroach compulsively clean itssel for about half an hour,
Speaker 2: making it a nice clean host for her baby. And
Speaker 2: then as the roach is primping, the wasp is off
Speaker 2: finding a good burrow, comes back, breaks off a roach
Speaker 2: antenna and gets a nice long quench from its body,
Speaker 2: and then uses the remaining antenna to lead this newly
Speaker 2: unfettered zombie roach like a freakin' farm donkey to a tomb,
Speaker 2: seals it up, lays an egg on its leg, and
Speaker 2: then her baby feeds off of this alive, stunned roach
Speaker 2: for days and days until it makes its debut in
Speaker 2: the world, busting out of the burrow like a curtain
Speaker 2: like a shiny, metallic, bejeweled queen at the best palm
Speaker 2: springs drag show you have ever witnessed wasps? I mean,
Speaker 2: are you even able to even right now?
Speaker 3: I had to go around the room picking up the
Speaker 3: pieces of my brain every day after.
Speaker 2: I love that. You just got to be inundated with
Speaker 2: wasp facts. Oh what a dream. I love that. Captain Morse,
Speaker 2: I asked, is it just random chance that I'm stung
Speaker 2: in the palm frequently by wasps on metal railings, grab bars,
Speaker 2: and even metal wheelchair parts. It's always a wasp and
Speaker 2: not a be This is a disability challenge. No one
Speaker 2: mentions do they like shiny things?
Speaker 3: Oh, first of all, that's not something anybody should endure
Speaker 3: more than once at least. But well, they'll perch on
Speaker 3: different surfaces to groom themselves a lot. So I often,
Speaker 3: you know, if I want to take pictures of wasps
Speaker 3: off and hang out around the edge of a field
Speaker 3: where there's shrubs and things with broad leaves, and so
Speaker 3: they'll land on there and they'll groom themselves, or they'll
Speaker 3: land on there to mate, or the males will land
Speaker 3: to guard territory or something on that order, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: they'll land on surfaces you wouldn't expect just in the
Speaker 3: course of needing to groom or rest for a minute
Speaker 3: or something like that. But they're not going to be
Speaker 3: there that if it's a hot surface. So the metal
Speaker 3: thing kind of surprises me a bit. I would expect
Speaker 3: them more on wood surfaces and foliage and things of
Speaker 3: that nature.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: Interesting. I wonder if they're perched on it, being like,
Speaker 2: why is it every time I sit on metal someone
Speaker 2: pushes me with her hand?
Speaker 1: Why I keep having in me? You know?
Speaker 2: I did some more digging on this and I couldn't
Speaker 2: find much. However, wasps do gravitate toward metallic cargrills because
Speaker 2: they like to snack on bug guts. So maybe Catherine,
Speaker 2: you ran over a bug or like a little bit
Speaker 2: of fresh sidewalk pizza cheese that was on your wheels
Speaker 2: that was just irresistible. I don't know very much a hypothesis,
Speaker 2: but I hope it doesn't happen. Again, Everyone don't litter,
Speaker 2: even if it's pizza. The repercussions can go on and on. Anyway,
Speaker 2: speaking of sucky stuff, Okay, the questions I always have
Speaker 2: to ask again, I know that we are here to
Speaker 2: absolutely adore wasps, and we do love them, and they
Speaker 2: are beautiful, But what is one thing about studying them
Speaker 2: that sucks?
Speaker 3: They're so bloody fast.
Speaker 2: That's an compliment. I love that, Yeah, I mean, they.
Speaker 3: Just don't sit still for anything hardly. Yeah, I considered
Speaker 3: a privilege when I get a chance to get up
Speaker 3: close to one for any period of time more than
Speaker 3: a nanosecond. I don't know, I mean, yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: you know, the fact that I'm in a minority of
Speaker 3: people that appreciate that may be the thing that sucks
Speaker 3: the most. I'm put on here to defend creatures that
Speaker 3: don't have a lot of Yeah, and our entomology community
Speaker 3: has has failed you, to be honest, you know, we
Speaker 3: haven't done our due diligence in pointing out the positive
Speaker 3: aspects of wasps in their diversity. There's in sectories where
Speaker 3: they raise any bitty teeny wasps that they release into
Speaker 3: agricultural fields, for example, But nobody hears about that. We
Speaker 3: only really hear about arts exactly.
Speaker 2: And just the fact that I have said on podcast
Speaker 2: episodes before that wasps or dix is is a huge
Speaker 2: flag to me that I don't know enough about wasps,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? And I'm and I love this.
Speaker 3: You do your homework, though, and I mean my hat
Speaker 3: is off to you. Your audience is already educated and
Speaker 3: eager to learn, and I wish that applied to more people.
Speaker 3: I want to thank your listeners in fact right now, Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Wasp guy likes you. Isn't that the best? It's gonna
Speaker 2: be a hard question to answer, but your favorite thing
Speaker 2: about wasps or your favorite wasp I don't know, how
Speaker 2: do you even answer? That?
Speaker 3: Their diversity is just astonishing? I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 3: that's in the title of the book, of the subtitle
Speaker 3: of the book, in fact, and more so even than
Speaker 3: I dreamed of. I mean, I had an inkling. I'm
Speaker 3: learning new stuff every day, so it's hard to it's
Speaker 3: hard to pick a favorite, but I you know, I
Speaker 3: certainly adore the shiny ones, the cuckoo wasps, and and
Speaker 3: the fuzzy wingless female velvet ants and their winged males
Speaker 3: and tarantil hawks and their metallic blue and orange and
Speaker 3: what have you. But yeah, they all have all have
Speaker 3: a place, and you don't you know, you don't have
Speaker 3: to like every organism as long as you understand that
Speaker 3: it has a place and you can respect that and
Speaker 3: act accordingly. You know, there's there's plenty of organisms I
Speaker 3: don't like, but I but thankfully I understand their their
Speaker 3: role in the ecosystem and their impact on humanity enough to,
Speaker 3: you know, to pay them some respect.
Speaker 2: I think we should start conversations with what's your favorite wasp?
Speaker 2: And if that's just how you know, that's gonna be
Speaker 2: an icebreaker, you better find a favorite wasp.
Speaker 3: That's fine by me.
Speaker 2: My favorite wasp is probably the tarantula hawk wasp. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're so beautiful. I have that brilliant, like midnight blue
Speaker 2: body and this golden almost like caramel colored wings, and
Speaker 2: whenever I see them in California, I freak out. I
Speaker 2: get so excited. I've been on like a hike before.
Speaker 2: I like pointed stranger story to be like, look look
Speaker 2: at this beautiful thing. It's so nice to see you one.
Speaker 2: So I don't know they're so beautiful. Oh, well, congratulations
Speaker 2: on your book.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I mean wasps the astonishing diversity of a misunderstood insect.
Speaker 2: It says it all. I love it so exciting. Thank
Speaker 2: you so so much for being on I love wasps.
Speaker 3: Now, well, it's an honor to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: So ask passionate people about unsung underdogs and look you
Speaker 2: respect WASPS now, I know you do. Just let them
Speaker 2: have their space and everyone's going to be fine. So
Speaker 2: get Eric's book, Wasps, The Astonishing Diversity of a misunderstand Insect.
Speaker 2: Wherever books are sold. You'll find a link in the
Speaker 2: show notes. You can find his work on his blog,
Speaker 2: bug Eric dot blogspot dot com. He's on Twitter at
Speaker 2: bug Eric. We are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: I'm at Ali ward one l on both. Please be
Speaker 2: my friend. You can join the family at patreon dot com.
Speaker 2: Slash Ologies cost a dollar a month to get in. Also,
Speaker 2: hello to everyone on the Ologies podcast subreddit. Thank you
Speaker 2: Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Hello.
Speaker 2: Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you
Speaker 2: Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltus for managing that. Emily White
Speaker 2: of the Wordery does our professional transcripts. Kayla Patten does
Speaker 2: the bleeping and transcripts and bleeped episodes are linked in
Speaker 2: the show notes. They're on my website. Thank you Susan
Speaker 2: Hale and Euel Dilworth for keeping Ologies engines running. It's
Speaker 2: been a wacky couple of months. We are shooting double
Speaker 2: our usual schedule for Innovation Nation. Plus I took a
Speaker 2: few extra TV show consulting jobs this year, and I'm
Speaker 2: getting married in a few weeks. To editor Jared Sleeper,
Speaker 2: very handsome, smart person, Hi, Hi Jared. Things have been,
Speaker 2: let's just say, very active at word HQ lately. Thank
Speaker 2: you as always to co editor Stephen Ray Morris, always
Speaker 2: a busy bee and a wonderful wasp himself and Nick
Speaker 2: Thorburn of the band Islands did the theme music. And
Speaker 2: if you stick around to the end of the episode,
Speaker 2: I tell you a secret, and this week I will
Speaker 2: tell you in grammar school. I still feel guilty about this.
Speaker 2: I was mucking about, just getting filthy at recess a lot.
Speaker 2: I would build like tiny mudhouses or what have you.
Speaker 2: And one day my friend Steve was like, Hey, you
Speaker 2: want to see a yellowjacket nest? And I was like,
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, dude, And me and his friend Brandon walked
Speaker 2: over to a hill and stopped in front of a
Speaker 2: hole in the ground and I'm like, where's this nest, y'all?
Speaker 2: And Brandon stomped on the hole and the yellow jackets
Speaker 2: were like, not cool, Brandon, not cool. We got babies
Speaker 2: in here and then they flooded out like a cartoon,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I got multiple stings in my hand, and
Speaker 2: yes I cried like a B word. But also I
Speaker 2: was like yellow jackets, well played a worthy adversarah, I
Speaker 2: have learned. Even though it wasn't me, it was Brandon
Speaker 2: that stumped on it. I never would have condoned that. However,
Speaker 2: I did get to go home for the rest of
Speaker 2: the day, which kind of rolled and watched the prices. Right, Okay,
Speaker 2: so respect you're flying sharks and drink out of clear glasses. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's all by fosha tilsterine, phosphatiliserine because you're tight. Phospho tillisserine,
Speaker 2: lipids and membrane orders for phospho tittle cerine, phospha tittle
Speaker 2: cerine lipids FOSSP, fosspa, phospha, tittle sarine, lip breads, fasva,
Speaker 2: title phosph the titles staring, phospha title sarine, lipids and
Speaker 2: membrane order precisely regulate the activity of polibya mp one peptide.
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