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Waspish Behaviour(M4A_128K) · Luke's English Podcast

0:06
Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to another Science of the Times podcast. I'm
0:10
Speaker 1: Tim Coulson.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Saima Khalid.
0:14
Speaker 1: And how are you this week, Saima?
0:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, good, thanks. Lots of relaxing and work, so all good.
0:20
Speaker 1: Good. Have you noticed all the wasps around? Did you?
0:24
Speaker 2: Yes, I really have.
0:26
Speaker 3: And I'm wondering if someone's told you what happened to
0:29
Speaker 3: me or someone witnessed it a couple of days ago.
0:32
Speaker 1: I don't know yet. Tell the listeners what happened.
0:36
Speaker 3: So I went out for dinner with a dear friend
0:38
Speaker 3: of mine, Jane Wallace, just in the Westgate shopping center
0:43
Speaker 3: in Oxford. And we went in and sort of we
0:45
Speaker 3: hadn't booked a table. So we said, do you have
0:47
Speaker 3: a table? And they said, well, we only have one
0:49
Speaker 3: table left.
0:50
Speaker 2: It's outside. But we're a bit worried there might be
0:52
Speaker 2: a few wasps around. So we thought, oh, that's fine.
0:55
Speaker 2: We can deal with a few wasps.
0:56
Speaker 3: So we sat down. We ordered some drinks and then
0:59
Speaker 3: as the food came, we just got absolutely.
1:03
Speaker 2: Swamped by wasps.
1:04
Speaker 3: So in the end, we ended up having our meal
1:06
Speaker 3: by running to the table, taking a mouthful. then running
1:10
Speaker 3: around to get away from the wasps, back to the table,
1:15
Speaker 3: another mouthful, and then again.
1:16
Speaker 2: So yes, I'm all too.
1:18
Speaker 1: Did either of you get stung?
1:19
Speaker 2: No, luckily we didn't.
1:21
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, so this year has been a really good
1:24
Speaker 1: year for predatory insects. So we had all the ladybirds,
1:28
Speaker 1: ladybugs in the US around earlier that were feeding on
1:31
Speaker 1: the aphids. And then it's a very, very good year
1:34
Speaker 1: for wasps, apparently. And so we're going to get on.
1:38
Speaker 1: Sarian Sumner, we'll introduce her just now. And she's an
1:42
Speaker 1: expert on wasps. And she's written a fantastic book called
1:45
Speaker 1: Endless Forms, which is all about wasps. It's about their evolution.
1:51
Speaker 1: She explains that ants are wasps that have forgotten how
1:55
Speaker 1: to fly and bees are wasps that have forgotten how
1:58
Speaker 1: to hunt. And I think you'll enjoy chatting to her
2:02
Speaker 1: and our listeners will enjoy it too. So should we
2:04
Speaker 1: get her on?
2:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do that.
2:07
Speaker 1: Excellent. So, Sarian, I wonder if you could perhaps start
2:11
Speaker 1: by introducing yourself and saying a little bit about who
2:14
Speaker 1: you are.
2:15
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
2:16
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I am Sarian Sumner.
2:18
Speaker 5: I'm a professor of behavioural ecology at UCL and I
2:22
Speaker 5: have a strong weakness for wasps.
2:25
Speaker 1: And that comes across in your excellent book, Endless Forms,
2:30
Speaker 1: which came out a little while ago and it was
2:32
Speaker 1: published by, remind me who it was published by?
2:34
Speaker 4: William Collins.
2:36
Speaker 1: William Collins. And we will put a link to the
2:38
Speaker 1: book underneath the podcast. But I thoroughly recommend everyone to
2:43
Speaker 1: read it, all our listeners to read it. You know,
2:46
Speaker 1: I'm a zoologist, so I don't mind wasps. But if
2:51
Speaker 1: you're not sure about wasps, you should definitely read this book,
2:54
Speaker 1: because as we're about to learn, they are truly remarkable creatures.
3:00
Speaker 1: But Saima, are you a wasp lover?
3:01
Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, is anyone who doesn't do work in re
3:07
Speaker 3: you know, doesn't do research in wasps or wasps lover.
3:09
Speaker 3: I think, I think it's a bit natural for us
3:11
Speaker 3: as for most of us to be a little bit
3:13
Speaker 3: afraid of them.
3:14
Speaker 2: Right.
3:14
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's just something that's in sort
3:17
Speaker 3: of popular culture. Wasps are something to be afraid of. We,
3:20
Speaker 3: you know, it's, that's the way we sort of grew
3:22
Speaker 3: up thinking about them. So how did you get into, get,
3:26
Speaker 3: get into wasps, I guess. Well, I am also a product.
3:29
Speaker 5: Of that same culture in that I never used to
3:31
Speaker 5: like wasps. And I accidentally fell into the wasp world.
3:36
Speaker 5: So I was, I did my undergraduate at UCL. And
3:41
Speaker 5: one of the reasons why I chose UCL is because
3:43
Speaker 5: they had quite a strong animal behavior angle at the time.
3:47
Speaker 5: And I was, by the end of my degree, I
3:50
Speaker 5: kind of realized I wanted to do research and really
3:52
Speaker 5: wanted to study animal behavior for a PhD. And it
3:56
Speaker 5: just so happened there was a new young lecturer, Jeremy Fields,
4:00
Speaker 5: who'd arrived and was looking for a student, had some
4:03
Speaker 5: money back in the day when they came with their
4:05
Speaker 5: own PhD students, you know, in new positions. And it
4:09
Speaker 5: was behaviour. So it was the evolution of social behaviour.
4:13
Speaker 5: And I was interested and recommended. And I remember having
4:18
Speaker 5: this conversation with him very clearly. And I said, well,
4:21
Speaker 5: I think the question's really interesting, Jeremy, but I really
4:24
Speaker 5: don't like wasps.
4:26
Speaker 4: I don't want to get stung.
4:27
Speaker 5: And he went, oh, no, no, no, don't worry. You know,
4:29
Speaker 5: these wasps don't sting. I was like, OK, that's fine.
4:33
Speaker 4: That's a big fat lie. Of course they sting.
4:36
Speaker 5: But to be fair, these were the Malaysian hover wasps, Stenogastroni.
4:42
Speaker 4: And they are social wasps. They do live in a group.
4:45
Speaker 5: And they do have stings, they're a culeate wasp, but
4:49
Speaker 5: their stings are very delicate.
4:51
Speaker 4: And in fact, I described.
4:54
Speaker 1: Did you ever get stung by one?
4:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit.
4:56
Speaker 5: But really only if it was like, you know, their
4:59
Speaker 5: response to any kind of scariness or predation is they
5:02
Speaker 5: just literally fall off the nest.
5:04
Speaker 4: And so sometimes they'd fall down your neck and they'd
5:07
Speaker 4: get a little bit stung, you know, where your sting
5:09
Speaker 4: is very delicate. But really their stings are described as.
5:14
Speaker 5: A um a delicate fragrant tickle i wouldn't quite describe
5:18
Speaker 5: them like that but you know that's that's that's technically
5:21
Speaker 5: how they describe but they don't sting very much they
5:23
Speaker 5: were really good gateway wasp so if you're thinking of
5:26
Speaker 5: getting into wasps then you know beginners level wasp they
5:30
Speaker 5: are i'll make a note yep but.
5:33
Speaker 1: It is the sting that gives wasps such a bad
5:36
Speaker 1: reputation isn't it i mean people you know people just
5:40
Speaker 1: see them around their picnics you call them in your
5:42
Speaker 1: book you know sort of the troublesome yellow jackets at
5:48
Speaker 1: picnics or something along those lines. And they can sting.
5:52
Speaker 1: And people just think, well, they're just here to annoy me.
5:55
Speaker 1: And that's how they get a bad reputation. But they
5:57
Speaker 1: do actually play a role, don't they, in ecosystems?
6:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, they do play a role.
6:01
Speaker 5: And you're absolutely right that if you ask people what
6:03
Speaker 5: they think about wasps, and we've run a survey on
6:06
Speaker 5: this that we've published, the only word that people have
6:09
Speaker 5: to describe wasps is sting.
6:12
Speaker 4: Along with annoying and lots of other rude words.
6:16
Speaker 5: And that's kind of, you know, that's the interactions that
6:19
Speaker 5: we have with wasps.
6:20
Speaker 4: It's at our picnics and it's the end.
6:23
Speaker 5: Of summer when we're desperately trying to enjoy those last
6:25
Speaker 5: few sunny days with our fresco dining.
6:28
Speaker 4: And then along comes.
6:29
Speaker 5: A wasp and it's a bit, you know, hovering around
6:31
Speaker 5: us and we're thwacking it away with our arms and
6:34
Speaker 5: we're shouting at it. And by doing that, we're actually
6:37
Speaker 5: behaving just like their natural predator, the badger.
6:41
Speaker 4: Which of course they have evolved to.
6:43
Speaker 5: Respond to those cues of flailing limbs when the badger's
6:47
Speaker 5: digging up their nest or breathing heavily on them. And
6:50
Speaker 5: so it's no surprise that they end up stinging us.
6:53
Speaker 1: We should sit there quietly, should we, instead?
6:56
Speaker 4: You should absolutely sit there quietly. Don't behave like a badger.
6:59
Speaker 4: Sit there quietly, watch them, see what they want, and
7:02
Speaker 4: then give them a little wasp offering.
7:05
Speaker 5: So early in the season, it tends to be protein
7:08
Speaker 5: that they're hunting.
7:09
Speaker 4: So they might want a bit of your sausage or
7:11
Speaker 4: your chicken.
7:11
Speaker 5: And then later on in the season, they switch to
7:14
Speaker 5: sugar foraging because most of the larvae by then have pupated.
7:19
Speaker 4: And most people don't realize that actually the.
7:22
Speaker 5: Adult wasps themselves are vegetarian and they hunt prey to
7:27
Speaker 5: feed to the larvae. It's the larvae who are the carnivores.
7:30
Speaker 5: And when they feed the larvae, the larvae give them
7:33
Speaker 5: a sugary reward in return through trophallaxis, this transfer of
7:37
Speaker 5: fluids between them. And that's a really important part of
7:40
Speaker 5: their nutrition. But at the end of the summer, the
7:43
Speaker 5: reason why wasps tend to impinge on our lives a
7:46
Speaker 5: bit more is that there's many fewer larvae to feed.
7:49
Speaker 5: So the wasps are kind of furloughed slightly from the
7:51
Speaker 5: colony and that they have less work to do. But
7:54
Speaker 5: they're also getting less sugar from the larvae and they
7:58
Speaker 5: have to go and look for sugar elsewhere. So normally
8:01
Speaker 5: that would have been flowers. You know, they do visit
8:04
Speaker 5: flowers that make some good pollinators. But actually, your alfresco
8:08
Speaker 5: dining of jam sandwiches and beer.
8:13
Speaker 4: Whatever it is, lemonade, they will happily go for that instead.
8:16
Speaker 5: So that's why we end up encountering wasps a lot
8:20
Speaker 5: more at the end of the summer.
8:21
Speaker 3: So does that mean sort of what you said that,
8:24
Speaker 3: you know, we're sort of behaving like their natural prey,
8:27
Speaker 3: their predator, sorry, the badger? And we think of wasps
8:31
Speaker 3: as pretty aggressive. So if we didn't respond in that way,
8:35
Speaker 3: would they leave us alone?
8:37
Speaker 4: Well, they don't leave you alone. They're just, you know,
8:39
Speaker 4: they're not going to sting you.
8:40
Speaker 5: So often what they will do, which can be quite intimidating,
8:43
Speaker 5: I have to confess, is that they will fly in
8:45
Speaker 5: this kind of zigzag in front of your face and
8:48
Speaker 5: they are eyeing you up.
8:49
Speaker 4: And the reason they're.
8:50
Speaker 5: Doing that is not that they're thinking about where to
8:52
Speaker 5: sting you or how to sting you. It's that they're
8:56
Speaker 5: using you as a landmark. because they're very visual creatures
9:00
Speaker 5: and they want to know how to come back to
9:03
Speaker 5: your jam sandwich or your beer. And so they're eyeing
9:07
Speaker 5: up the landmarks around them such that they know when
9:10
Speaker 5: they come back, they'll know how to find you.
9:12
Speaker 4: So it can be, you know, a wasp was actually
9:14
Speaker 4: doing this.
9:15
Speaker 5: To me the other day and it's early in the summer,
9:16
Speaker 5: but it was kind of like moving around me and
9:19
Speaker 5: I was like, going to use my own.
9:20
Speaker 4: Advice and not move.
9:23
Speaker 5: And they won't, I mean, it's unfortunate. I think the
9:26
Speaker 5: times when people do sit still and still get stung
9:29
Speaker 5: is if a wasp crawls up inside their, you know,
9:31
Speaker 5: their shirt or their trousers. And wasps are more likely
9:34
Speaker 5: to do that than a bee, for example, because wasps
9:37
Speaker 5: will hunt prey in dark places. And so perhaps... you know,
9:41
Speaker 5: crawling up your shorts leg was actually there. You know,
9:43
Speaker 5: they thought that was a good strategy. There might be some,
9:46
Speaker 5: you know, grasshopper hidden up there or something for them
9:48
Speaker 5: to hunt.
9:50
Speaker 4: And so they do, you know, bees will always go
9:52
Speaker 4: towards light.
9:53
Speaker 5: Wasps will often go away from the light into dark places.
9:57
Speaker 5: And so that's when they start to sort of they
9:59
Speaker 5: can get into places where bees can never, never even
10:03
Speaker 5: think of going. So things like wearing a bee suit
10:06
Speaker 5: is a good defense against wasps when we're digging up
10:09
Speaker 5: the colonies. But it never does the complete job because
10:12
Speaker 5: those wasps will find tiny holes that bees didn't even
10:15
Speaker 5: bother to think of.
10:17
Speaker 1: But we're talking about yellow jackets now. But in fact,
10:21
Speaker 1: wasps are incredibly diverse. And some of the most remarkable
10:25
Speaker 1: ones are the parasitoid wasps that you talk about. And
10:29
Speaker 1: the one that fascinated me, I'd never heard of before,
10:32
Speaker 1: I think it's a type of jewel wasp that preys
10:34
Speaker 1: on American... Well, you should describe what they do. Prey
10:37
Speaker 1: isn't quite the right word, really, is it? But they use...
10:40
Speaker 1: I think it's an American cockroach, which they... they sting
10:45
Speaker 1: and then all sorts of crazy things happen. So do
10:48
Speaker 1: you want to tell us about that? I was just
10:50
Speaker 1: in a way.
10:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I mean, just coming back to your point
10:52
Speaker 5: about diversity there, you're absolutely right. That's the wasp that
10:55
Speaker 5: most people know as wasps is the yellow jackets. But
10:57
Speaker 5: there's a very small number of species of those. In fact,
11:00
Speaker 5: there's less than 70 species of all the yellow jackets
11:04
Speaker 5: and hornets combined, which are the wasps that most.
11:07
Speaker 4: People think of.
11:08
Speaker 5: But actually, there's over 100,000 described species of wasps. There
11:12
Speaker 5: are probably five to 10 times that to be discovered.
11:17
Speaker 5: And most of that diversity is within the parasitoids. So
11:20
Speaker 5: the parasitoids don't sting. They have an ovipositor, which they
11:24
Speaker 5: use to lay their eggs. And then in the aculeate wasps,
11:27
Speaker 5: the stinging wasps, the sting is a modified ovipositor.
11:32
Speaker 4: So it's evolved into a sting.
11:35
Speaker 5: But you're absolutely right, Tim, that they hunt prey in
11:39
Speaker 5: the same way that an aculeate stinging wasp will.
11:42
Speaker 4: But then they will paralyze it. And, no, sorry, that's
11:47
Speaker 4: not right. We'll have to cut that bit out.
11:49
Speaker 1: We would cut that bit out, yes.
11:51
Speaker 5: So the parasitoids will hunt prey in the same way,
11:55
Speaker 5: but they will then not paralyze it or kill it
11:57
Speaker 5: at all. They will simply deposit their egg on it
12:01
Speaker 5: or in it, and then the egg hatches into a
12:04
Speaker 5: baby wasp, and then it'll eat the living host alive.
12:09
Speaker 4: And so they.
12:12
Speaker 5: they parasitize the host as a sort of food resource.
12:16
Speaker 5: And the jewel wasp is one of those kind of
12:18
Speaker 5: poster children of the parasitoid. So compared to the cockroach,
12:25
Speaker 5: the parasitoid wasp is actually quite small. So she can't
12:29
Speaker 5: fly away with the cockroach once she's found it.
12:33
Speaker 4: But what she will do is she.
12:35
Speaker 5: Will lay her, she will sting it in two different
12:39
Speaker 5: places so she'll sting it on the thorax to stop
12:43
Speaker 5: it sort of wandering around and then she will sting
12:46
Speaker 5: it in its inject a sorry I've just realised Tim
12:51
Speaker 5: that you've led me at the garden path here because
12:53
Speaker 5: these are not parasitoids these are predatory.
12:55
Speaker 1: Wasps yeah okay do you want to say I realise that.
12:57
Speaker 4: Because you're talking about this.
12:59
Speaker 1: Thing we'll go back to answering my question after having
13:03
Speaker 1: done the diversity bit right Yeah, it was my fault.
13:07
Speaker 5: Sorry, I suddenly realised that I was on one track
13:09
Speaker 5: and we were talking about something else.
13:11
Speaker 1: Correct me and say, just say, no, they're not parasitoid wasps.
13:15
Speaker 1: They're stinging wasps. And then explain what they do. So Rich,
13:19
Speaker 1: pick up again from here. Yeah, OK.
13:21
Speaker 4: So you're absolutely right about the diversity.
13:23
Speaker 5: But the cockroach hunting wasp, the jewel wasp, is actually
13:27
Speaker 5: not a parasitoid. It does actually have a stink. It's
13:31
Speaker 5: an aculeate wasp. And it's a predator. It will hunt
13:36
Speaker 5: its prey and then it will paralyze it. So there
13:39
Speaker 5: are about 30,000 species of stinging wasps and a very
13:42
Speaker 5: small proportion, about one to two percent of them are social.
13:47
Speaker 4: So they live in the big societies like the yellow
13:49
Speaker 4: jacket wasps and the hornets.
13:51
Speaker 5: But the vast majority of them, around 30,000 species that
13:54
Speaker 5: have been described.
13:56
Speaker 4: Are solitary hunters. And so they will hunt some prey.
14:00
Speaker 5: And like like the cockroach and they will paralyze it
14:05
Speaker 5: and bring it to a burrow and then lay its
14:07
Speaker 5: egg on it.
14:08
Speaker 4: And then they will seal it up. And that's the
14:10
Speaker 4: end of parental care.
14:11
Speaker 5: And then the egg hatches out into the baby lava
14:15
Speaker 5: wasp and it will eat this living larder, this paralyzed,
14:19
Speaker 5: preserved living larder for over the next few weeks until
14:22
Speaker 5: it's pupated. And so the jewel wasp is kind of
14:27
Speaker 5: the jewel of these examples. And it does this really
14:31
Speaker 5: cool thing.
14:31
Speaker 4: And it's called the jewel wasp because it really does
14:33
Speaker 4: look like a jewel. It's really pretty and iridescent.
14:36
Speaker 5: But it hunts cockroaches and the cockroach is much bigger
14:42
Speaker 5: than the wasp. So the wasp can't fly with the cockroach.
14:45
Speaker 5: So she has to have a better strategy to she.
14:48
Speaker 4: Can't even carry it. It's just too big to get
14:49
Speaker 4: it back to her burrow.
14:51
Speaker 5: So what she does is she first stings it in
14:53
Speaker 5: the thorax to stop it running away and immobilizes it.
14:57
Speaker 4: And then that enables her.
14:59
Speaker 5: To give it a very direct sting into the brain
15:01
Speaker 5: where it injects this neurotoxin, which then basically renders the
15:06
Speaker 5: cockroach incapable.
15:08
Speaker 4: Of free will, if you like.
15:10
Speaker 5: And then she, but it can still move. And so
15:13
Speaker 5: then she grabs it by its antenna. And I believe
15:16
Speaker 5: she actually breaks off its antenna a bit and has
15:18
Speaker 5: a little slurp of the old haemolymph. And then she
15:21
Speaker 5: will basically lead it like a poodle to its underground tomb,
15:25
Speaker 5: to a little burrow. And so basically the cockroach in
15:30
Speaker 5: this sort of zombified state will be led to its
15:33
Speaker 5: own tomb where it will then be buried, paralysed, alive
15:38
Speaker 5: but paralysed, and then it will have a baby wasp,
15:40
Speaker 5: a cute baby wasp.
15:41
Speaker 1: So if these wasps could make films and documentaries, Alien
15:46
Speaker 1: would be a documentary, wouldn't it?
15:48
Speaker 4: Oh, yes.
15:50
Speaker 5: Honestly there are so many i mean whenever i give
15:54
Speaker 5: talks about wasps to groups of school children you know
15:57
Speaker 5: they always love the idea this gruesome assassins that these
16:01
Speaker 5: wasps are and then if you give the same talk
16:04
Speaker 5: to adults they'll always go for oh yes wasps are
16:07
Speaker 5: really important to ecosystems as pest controllers oh yes that's
16:10
Speaker 5: very important but i think there is so much drama
16:14
Speaker 5: packed away in these stories of of of predatory uh
16:17
Speaker 5: stinging wasps that barely studied.
16:20
Speaker 4: I mean, they're so understudied.
16:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got me thinking now.
16:25
Speaker 3: I wonder if that neurotoxin can be harnessed and used
16:29
Speaker 3: in a therapeutic way.
16:30
Speaker 2: Who knows?
16:31
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's another really exciting area of research.
16:34
Speaker 5: Not my own area of research, but I read quite
16:38
Speaker 5: a lot about it when I wrote my book.
16:40
Speaker 4: And there is a surprising amount of.
16:44
Speaker 5: People who have studied the components of venom in wasps, actually,
16:49
Speaker 5: mostly social wasps, to be fair, but inside the venom
16:53
Speaker 5: itself is kind of like an untapped medicine cabinet. Lots
16:57
Speaker 5: of biochemicals of potential medicinal.
17:02
Speaker 4: Properties in there. But what we do know about this
17:05
Speaker 4: venom is with these solitary.
17:07
Speaker 5: Wasps is quite interesting because if you think about it,
17:09
Speaker 5: they've got to paralyze a very specific kind of prey.
17:12
Speaker 5: So solitary wasps tend to hunt a very specific prey type.
17:16
Speaker 5: So you get the spider hunters and the cricket hunters.
17:19
Speaker 4: And the fly hunters.
17:20
Speaker 5: And it's slightly generalizing, but largely they are moderately specialists
17:25
Speaker 5: in what they hunt. And that actually makes total evolutionary
17:29
Speaker 5: sense if you think about it, because in order to
17:32
Speaker 5: paralyze a spider, and of a particular size, then you
17:37
Speaker 5: probably need very different components in your venom to paralyzing
17:43
Speaker 5: a tiny fly, for example. And so I think there's
17:47
Speaker 5: probably been quite strong selection on these different lineages of
17:50
Speaker 5: wasps to have a very bespoke type of venom.
17:53
Speaker 4: Now that's just an open question, really, open hypothesis. But
17:57
Speaker 4: there are already.
17:58
Speaker 5: Some medicinal properties that have been identified from wasp venom.
18:02
Speaker 5: And the two that spring to mind are bradyokinins, which
18:07
Speaker 5: are used.
18:08
Speaker 4: In, are you both nodding your heads? You probably know
18:09
Speaker 4: more about this than I do.
18:10
Speaker 1: No, I know.
18:11
Speaker 5: You're just looking very sage. So bradyokinins are often given
18:19
Speaker 5: to intensive care patients because it causes vasodilation, which means
18:25
Speaker 5: that then drugs can be pumped around the body much quicker.
18:28
Speaker 5: And so that also makes sense. And if you're trying
18:31
Speaker 5: to paralyze an enormous, tarantula or something which some wasps
18:34
Speaker 5: do then you want it to happen quite quickly before
18:37
Speaker 5: the tarantula makes you their dinner um and so you
18:40
Speaker 5: have to get the the venom around the body quite
18:43
Speaker 5: quickly so it causes everything to kind of relax a
18:45
Speaker 5: bit um and then the other component with potential medical
18:49
Speaker 5: um interest is our mastoporins which are peptides which have
18:54
Speaker 5: been shown to potentially um be a cure for cancer
18:58
Speaker 5: because they cause uh cancerous cells to hemorrhage and explode
19:03
Speaker 5: So that's kind of an exciting area of research.
19:05
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
19:07
Speaker 1: So we should probably take a break and go to
19:09
Speaker 1: our sponsors. But if you're enjoying this, please remember to
19:14
Speaker 1: subscribe and like and share. And further details of Sarian's
19:18
Speaker 1: book will be in the notes below.
19:21
Speaker 2: Hi, Tim.
19:23
Speaker 3: You're looking particularly snazzy today.
19:25
Speaker 2: What are you wearing?
19:26
Speaker 1: I'm wearing a piece from A company called Grace and Garbo.
19:31
Speaker 1: And actually, you know a little bit more about them
19:33
Speaker 1: than I do, to be honest.
19:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, I do.
19:35
Speaker 1: You're the fashion queen.
19:37
Speaker 3: I'm also wearing a piece from Grace and Garbo. So
19:40
Speaker 3: this is a delightful knitwear outfit set up in Birmingham.
19:45
Speaker 2: What they do is they.
19:47
Speaker 3: Source knitwear, quality knitwear from all around the world. It's vintage,
19:51
Speaker 3: one-off pieces, many of which they then hand embellish, like
19:54
Speaker 3: the one you're wearing today with its beautiful purple flowers.
19:58
Speaker 3: And so they're big on sustainability. You know, nothing goes
20:02
Speaker 3: to waste. Everything is sort of recycled and reused. And
20:05
Speaker 3: if you want to know more about them, then have
20:08
Speaker 3: a look at the link beneath this episode.
20:11
Speaker 1: And thank you very much to them for supporting our podcast.
20:14
Speaker 1: I hope their sales soar.
20:17
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Grace and Garvo.
20:19
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Sorry, Saima, just before we were going to
20:22
Speaker 1: the break, I interrupted you. So you had another question,
20:26
Speaker 1: didn't you?
20:27
Speaker 2: I just wanted to ask you about more bizarre behaviour.
20:29
Speaker 2: So obviously, as you just talked about, the.
20:32
Speaker 3: I think probably most of our listeners will not have
20:35
Speaker 3: known about the cockroach parasitizing behavior of these jewel wasps.
20:41
Speaker 3: But are there any other bizarre behaviors that perhaps people
20:43
Speaker 3: are unaware of, do you think?
20:45
Speaker 5: Well, rather than bizarre, I would actually, there's a fabulous
20:50
Speaker 5: story packed away in one of the commonest solitary wasps
20:55
Speaker 5: that you find in the UK, and that's the beewolf.
20:58
Speaker 5: So any sandy soils, particularly in the southern part of
21:01
Speaker 5: the UK, you will find in the summer, you'll find.
21:04
Speaker 4: These little wasps that are called bee wolves. And as
21:08
Speaker 4: the name suggests, they are wolves of bees. They hunt bees.
21:11
Speaker 4: And everybody goes, oh, no, the poor bees. Their numbers
21:16
Speaker 4: are not having any impact at all.
21:18
Speaker 5: So what they do is they capture the bee and
21:21
Speaker 5: they fly back to their nest with it.
21:24
Speaker 4: The burrow that they've already dug, and then they will
21:26
Speaker 4: embalm it.
21:27
Speaker 5: They'll lick it all over, which forms a kind of
21:30
Speaker 5: waxy coating. And that provides them the prey, which is
21:36
Speaker 5: a paralysed honeybee, with a first line of defence against diseases. Now,
21:42
Speaker 5: it's worth saying that actually bees apparently are incredibly mucky.
21:45
Speaker 5: and full of, you know, diseases and, you know, fungi
21:49
Speaker 5: and bacteria.
21:50
Speaker 4: They just love, they love bees.
21:52
Speaker 5: So if you just left a paralyzed bee in the soil,
21:55
Speaker 5: it would just grow lots of stuff on it. And
21:57
Speaker 5: the wasp baby itself would have, you know, would be
22:01
Speaker 5: outcompeted by microorganisms and fungi. And so these bee worlds
22:05
Speaker 5: have evolved a remarkable portfolio of ways of disease management.
22:10
Speaker 5: So the first thing is the embalming. And then the
22:13
Speaker 5: second thing is the coolest thing. And I was blown
22:16
Speaker 5: away when I when I learned about this was that
22:19
Speaker 5: from their antenna, they will exude streptomyces bacteria, which, of course,
22:24
Speaker 5: produce streptomycin, which, along with penicillin, is one of the
22:28
Speaker 5: most important antibiotics that we use. So basically, the wasp
22:33
Speaker 5: has this mutualistic association. with the streptomyces, which its antenna
22:40
Speaker 5: have even got sort of special depressions in.
22:44
Speaker 4: It where the bacteria live. So it's a real symbiosis.
22:49
Speaker 5: And so they put these streptomyces into this little cocoon.
22:54
Speaker 5: So then you've got your waxy cuticle and then you've
22:57
Speaker 5: got your antibiotics topped inside. And then the idea is
23:01
Speaker 5: that when the egg, when the wasp egg hatches, the
23:04
Speaker 5: lava will kind of spread the antibiotic around the cocoon and.
23:09
Speaker 4: As it eats its living larder. But even better than that, you've.
23:14
Speaker 5: Obviously got a critical period of like a day or
23:17
Speaker 5: two before the egg hatches into a larva.
23:20
Speaker 4: And so the egg itself has its own disease management.
23:24
Speaker 4: It gives off kind.
23:25
Speaker 5: Of toxic farts of nitrous oxide, which is a fungicide.
23:30
Speaker 5: And so that kind of keeps them safe before the
23:33
Speaker 5: larva can distribute the antibiotic. So I think this is
23:37
Speaker 5: utterly incredible. And it's all come from a group in Germany.
23:42
Speaker 5: And it's just one solitary wasp. And there is, to
23:47
Speaker 5: my knowledge, there are no other solitary wasps that have
23:49
Speaker 5: been explored to this level in terms of its disease management.
23:53
Speaker 5: But if we started doing the same kind of studies
23:56
Speaker 5: on other solitary wasps, who knows what we would find.
23:59
Speaker 4: So I think that is, I think that's, I mean,
24:02
Speaker 4: you know, people.
24:02
Speaker 5: Can't be impressed by wasps when they hear that. I
24:05
Speaker 5: don't know what will impress them.
24:07
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And the other thing that I didn't know
24:10
Speaker 1: until I read your book was that bees and ants
24:15
Speaker 1: are actually descended from wasps a long time ago. So
24:18
Speaker 1: the wasp came first and then these other social animals
24:23
Speaker 1: came about. That's right. And solitary bees, I guess.
24:27
Speaker 4: Yeah.
24:28
Speaker 5: So they're all hymenoptera. So bees, wasps and ants all
24:32
Speaker 5: belong to the order hymenoptera. And the original, first, the oldest,
24:37
Speaker 5: evolutionarily oldest hymenoptera is actually, it is a wasp.
24:40
Speaker 4: It's the horned tail or the wood wasp or the sawfly.
24:44
Speaker 4: It's a wasp.
24:46
Speaker 5: And actually they were, they are, they still are. They're
24:49
Speaker 5: still around. They're still, they're vegetarians. So they will lay
24:52
Speaker 5: their eggs in plants and then the grub will eat
24:57
Speaker 5: the plant. And most people get a bit scared when
25:00
Speaker 5: they see a horntail because they look like really big,
25:05
Speaker 5: stumpy wasps because they lack the wasp waste, the constricted
25:08
Speaker 5: PTR between the thorax and the abdomen.
25:10
Speaker 1: So do I, by the way.
25:13
Speaker 4: They can't really scare you, but they can't sting. And
25:16
Speaker 4: they have this, but they have another positor that often
25:19
Speaker 4: looks like it can sting you because it's often sticking out.
25:22
Speaker 4: So people get terrified. And they're really impressive organisms.
25:26
Speaker 5: And then from the sawflies, the parasitoid wasp lineage evolved.
25:30
Speaker 5: And there was a key innovation that happened in that jump.
25:34
Speaker 5: Not only did parasitoid wasps start exploiting prey, being carnivores, larvae,
25:42
Speaker 5: as opposed to plants, but they also evolved the wasp waste,
25:46
Speaker 5: which then meant that they could fold around their abdomen
25:49
Speaker 5: to reach a diversity of different niches. And that might
25:53
Speaker 5: be one of the reasons why parasitoid wasps have parasitized
25:57
Speaker 5: such a huge diversity of prey, of insects across the world.
26:03
Speaker 4: Apparently, every insect has its own parasitoid wasp. You had
26:07
Speaker 4: to check that.
26:07
Speaker 1: Every single one.
26:09
Speaker 4: Every single one, apparently. And many of them have multiple parasitoids.
26:13
Speaker 1: And parasitoid wasps have their own. parasitoids as well is that.
26:18
Speaker 5: Right parasitoids that's right absolutely yeah so there's there's a
26:22
Speaker 5: whole like it's like a whole russian doll of parasitism
26:26
Speaker 5: i mean it's truly phenomenal um and then the stinging
26:30
Speaker 5: wasp evolved from a parasitoid wasp lineage um and that
26:34
Speaker 5: was the the innovation was the ovipositor evolving into the
26:38
Speaker 5: the the sting Um, and the, uh, and then the, the,
26:43
Speaker 5: the social wasps are just, there are just two origins
26:46
Speaker 5: of sociality of, in the wasp. But then also you're
26:49
Speaker 5: absolutely right, Tim, that the bees and the ants evolved
26:52
Speaker 5: from these aculeate wasps. Um, so bees are just vegetarian wasps.
26:58
Speaker 5: They lost the ability to hunt prey and instead they
27:01
Speaker 5: evolved the ability for their offspring to be reared on pollen. Um,
27:06
Speaker 5: And then the ants are simply a single lineage of
27:10
Speaker 5: social wasps. They're basically social wasps that have forgotten how
27:13
Speaker 5: to fly. So apart from the sexuals, which still have,
27:18
Speaker 5: most of them still have wings for dispersal and mating,
27:22
Speaker 5: the workers of these, of ants, don't fly. So, yeah,
27:25
Speaker 5: so basically everything is a wasp. That's another reason why
27:29
Speaker 5: we should name wasps.
27:32
Speaker 2: So.
27:33
Speaker 3: I guess we haven't touched at all on the impact
27:36
Speaker 3: of wasps on the ecosystem. And I think it's something
27:42
Speaker 3: that we hear a lot about, vaguely, most of us,
27:46
Speaker 3: and we know they're important. But the details, I think,
27:49
Speaker 3: for most of us are probably a bit scarce. So
27:52
Speaker 3: what do you think would be sort of a take-home
27:54
Speaker 3: message there?
27:55
Speaker 4: I'm so.
27:56
Speaker 5: pleased to hear that you say that most of us
27:58
Speaker 5: are vaguely aware that they do something useful because I
28:01
Speaker 5: think that's quite a new thing I.
28:03
Speaker 4: Think most people and in fact I.
28:05
Speaker 5: Know this because I gather data on it from the
28:07
Speaker 5: public most people don't understand what wasps do people do
28:12
Speaker 5: understand what bees do so the general public know that
28:15
Speaker 5: bees pollinate in fact you can stop a five-year-old on
28:17
Speaker 5: the street and they will be able to tell you
28:19
Speaker 5: all about pollination you know we've educated ourselves And the
28:23
Speaker 5: media have done a great job in that with publicizing
28:25
Speaker 5: the importance of pollinators and bees. Wasps, on the other hand,
28:30
Speaker 5: we have data to prove that people don't.
28:32
Speaker 4: Understand what wasps do. But the main role that wasps.
28:37
Speaker 5: Have in ecosystems is as hunters and regulators of other
28:43
Speaker 5: insect and arthropod populations. So in short term, they are
28:48
Speaker 5: pest controllers. So they play a really important role in
28:53
Speaker 5: regulating those insect populations. And again, we don't know a
28:58
Speaker 5: huge amount about it, but we're starting to get more
29:01
Speaker 5: of a grip on this. And social wasps in particular
29:05
Speaker 5: have potentially a very big impact on their local ecosystems
29:10
Speaker 5: because they have just because of the thousands of brood
29:13
Speaker 5: that they have to feed, have to feed. And also
29:17
Speaker 5: social wasps, so your common yellow jacket that bothers you
29:19
Speaker 5: at picnics, they tend to be quite generalist predators. And
29:25
Speaker 5: so we think that probably what they're doing is they're
29:27
Speaker 5: just creaming off whatever is really abundant in the environment.
29:32
Speaker 5: So that means that they're unlikely to hunt anything to
29:35
Speaker 5: local extinction, for example, which if you want, so lots
29:39
Speaker 5: of the parasitoid wasps, are used as biocontrol agents because
29:42
Speaker 5: they're very specific on what they hunt and so they're
29:46
Speaker 5: very good at getting rid of a particular kind of
29:48
Speaker 5: crop pest for example it doesn't mean that social wasps
29:51
Speaker 5: are not useful for biocontrol it just means that they
29:55
Speaker 5: can be used in a different way And if you
29:59
Speaker 5: think about it as a sort of apex predator within
30:03
Speaker 5: an environment like a wolf or something, you know, they
30:06
Speaker 5: are the wolves of the insect world where they are
30:09
Speaker 5: really take the wolves out of the ecosystem.
30:11
Speaker 4: Tim knows all about this. I don't know why I'm
30:12
Speaker 4: saying it.
30:13
Speaker 1: Everyone always ends up talking about wolves.
30:18
Speaker 5: Well, you take the top predator out and then everything
30:22
Speaker 5: gets out of balance. So that's basically what we do
30:25
Speaker 5: when we remove a wasp nest from our loft or
30:29
Speaker 5: our garden. We are upsetting the ecosystem.
30:33
Speaker 1: So tell us how you study wasps though, Sarim. I
30:36
Speaker 1: think you've spent quite a lot of time lying on
30:39
Speaker 1: the floor in forests or heathlands or, you know, all
30:43
Speaker 1: sorts of environments trying to work out what these animals do?
30:47
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not always very easy to study, are they?
30:52
Speaker 4: Oh, well, I think they're there for any insect.
30:54
Speaker 5: I mean, the great thing about social insects, more so
30:56
Speaker 5: than solitary, so most of my work's been on social,
30:59
Speaker 5: is that if you find a nest, you know, you've
31:02
Speaker 5: got quite a few individuals there to watch.
31:05
Speaker 4: But the unit of replication for study, of course, is
31:07
Speaker 4: the nest.
31:07
Speaker 5: So ideally, my favourite places are when I find huge
31:10
Speaker 5: aggregations of of wasp nests. And that's where, you know,
31:14
Speaker 5: my gateway wasp, the hovel wasp, the Malaysian hovel wasp,
31:18
Speaker 5: they do tend to live in aggregation. So often you'd
31:21
Speaker 5: find bridges or culverts, which are hundreds of nests under them,
31:26
Speaker 5: which for some people would be their idea of hell.
31:27
Speaker 4: But for me, obviously, that's heaven.
31:30
Speaker 1: And then you put marks on some of the wasps though,
31:32
Speaker 1: don't you?
31:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, we paint the wasps.
31:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
31:35
Speaker 5: So with just like Airfix paints, you get a pinhead
31:40
Speaker 5: and all actually the base of a pin, the pointy bits.
31:42
Speaker 5: And then you can, even on tiny wasps, you can
31:44
Speaker 5: get five or six paint dots on them. And you
31:46
Speaker 5: can even put them on the wings as well or
31:49
Speaker 5: on the larger wasps. So after I finished with my,
31:53
Speaker 5: you know, my trainee gateway delicate tickling wasps, I moved
31:58
Speaker 5: on to the, one of the biggest wasps that we
32:00
Speaker 5: have in the world, which is these Pellicetes paper wasps
32:05
Speaker 5: in the Neotropics.
32:08
Speaker 4: And they're great because, okay, they've got a really vicious sting,
32:10
Speaker 4: but they're great.
32:11
Speaker 5: Because you can put one of those bee tag numbers
32:14
Speaker 5: that beekeepers use to tag their queens. And so we've
32:18
Speaker 5: got number tags then, so we give them numbers. And
32:21
Speaker 5: then another thing we've done is we've also put radio
32:23
Speaker 5: tags on them this was back in like the early 2000s,
32:26
Speaker 5: mid 2000s, when it was, you know, radio tags was
32:29
Speaker 5: kind of a new thing.
32:31
Speaker 4: But we put them on the wasps. And so they
32:33
Speaker 4: swiped in and out of their nests.
32:35
Speaker 5: And by doing that, we discovered this nest drifting behavior.
32:39
Speaker 5: Because in a social wasp colony, particularly in these polystes wasps,
32:44
Speaker 5: where all the wasps on the nest are capable of reproduction.
32:48
Speaker 5: So unlike your honeybee or your, you know, your yellow
32:52
Speaker 5: jacket wasp where you've got the queen and the workers
32:54
Speaker 5: are sterile. In these very simple societies that these paper
32:58
Speaker 5: wasps build or live.
32:59
Speaker 4: In, all of the individuals can become a reproductive.
33:03
Speaker 5: They can mate, they can lay eggs, they can do everything.
33:06
Speaker 5: And yet they choose not to, they choose to stay
33:07
Speaker 5: at home and help. So they're brilliant models for.
33:10
Speaker 4: Understanding the evolution of altruism and group living.
33:15
Speaker 5: But one of the paradoxes, so I was in Panama
33:17
Speaker 5: studying this, And we started getting wasps on the wrong nest.
33:21
Speaker 5: We'd be doing these censuses and it's like, wow, we're
33:23
Speaker 5: really sloppy. Number 32 should be on nest 64. Why
33:27
Speaker 5: is it on this nest? And then I got these
33:30
Speaker 5: radio tags to try and eliminate human error. And still
33:34
Speaker 5: 50% of the wasps were on the wrong nest.
33:37
Speaker 4: So that was like really weird.
33:40
Speaker 5: So we did some genetics and we did some manipulation experiments.
33:43
Speaker 4: And several years later, we.
33:45
Speaker 5: Figured out that These wasps that drift from one nest
33:48
Speaker 5: to another are actually visiting nests to which they are related.
33:53
Speaker 5: So they're most related to their home nest because they
33:56
Speaker 5: are usually the daughter of the breeder. It's good to
34:01
Speaker 5: help raise siblings because you're passing on your genes by
34:05
Speaker 5: raising your siblings. But they visit other nests which they
34:09
Speaker 5: are less related to, but still have some level of relatedness.
34:13
Speaker 4: So they're help. is still worth something in terms of genetics.
34:18
Speaker 4: So that's kind of cool.
34:19
Speaker 5: But then what was even cooler is that we realized
34:22
Speaker 5: that what they were doing is that they were apportioning
34:25
Speaker 5: their help based on the nest that most needed their help.
34:30
Speaker 5: What to do with the worker brood ratio. So if
34:34
Speaker 5: you happen to be a worker on your home nest
34:36
Speaker 5: and there's loads of workers and not that many larvae,
34:40
Speaker 5: and then there's a nest just a few meters away,
34:43
Speaker 5: where they are, you know, distantly related, but still related,
34:47
Speaker 5: and they're not many workers, but there's loads of larvae,
34:50
Speaker 5: then there is a need for help. And so your
34:52
Speaker 5: help is worth more on those.
34:54
Speaker 4: Nests, depending on that worker-breed ratio.
34:56
Speaker 3: It seems that given the state the world's in right now,
34:59
Speaker 3: we could probably learn quite a lot about wasps from wasps, right?
35:03
Speaker 3: About how to organise ourselves.
35:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know. There are so many lovely analogies.
35:06
Speaker 5: And I think that's one of the things that really
35:08
Speaker 5: gripped me when I first was lying on the rainforest
35:11
Speaker 5: floor looking at these social wasps in Malaysia. They're like half,
35:15
Speaker 5: you know, a few centimetres from my face. I realised
35:17
Speaker 5: that they are like a little soap opera. And especially
35:20
Speaker 5: if you've marked all of them individually and you've watched
35:23
Speaker 5: them be, you know, you know when they popped out
35:25
Speaker 5: of their pupil cell because you were.
35:26
Speaker 4: There and you marked them and you've given them a
35:28
Speaker 4: name tag, basically.
35:30
Speaker 5: And so you fall in love with yellow, green, pink,
35:32
Speaker 5: and you know that yellow, green, pink is going to
35:34
Speaker 5: beat up blue, blue, white. And you kind of build
35:37
Speaker 5: up this whole little social network.
35:39
Speaker 4: We use social network analyses to sort of analyse their interactions.
35:44
Speaker 4: And it is quite a drama.
35:46
Speaker 5: You know, there's a whole soap opera happening in there.
35:50
Speaker 5: And I think the analogies with humans are particularly compelling
35:53
Speaker 5: with these simple societies where they're all capable of autonomous
35:58
Speaker 5: behaviours and autonomous reproductive strategies.
36:02
Speaker 1: Well, certainly we're running out of time, unfortunately. We try
36:04
Speaker 1: and keep our podcasts to about half an hour and
36:07
Speaker 1: we always overrun by a few minutes as we have
36:09
Speaker 1: done now. But, you know, just before we kind of
36:12
Speaker 1: finish off, my favourite wasp, and I am a zoologist,
36:16
Speaker 1: has always been the tarantula hawk, which preys on tarantulas.
36:20
Speaker 1: And I've seen them in the southern states and South America.
36:25
Speaker 1: But what's your favourite wasp? I think I know what
36:28
Speaker 1: you're going to say from your book, but I want to.
36:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.
36:31
Speaker 5: Well, you know, actually, before I wrote my book, I
36:33
Speaker 5: was very clear on what my favorite wasp was. And
36:35
Speaker 5: it is Pellicetes canadensis, which is the big Pellicetes that
36:40
Speaker 5: I've worked on a lot in Panama. And the reason
36:44
Speaker 5: why it's my favorite is I guess it was the
36:46
Speaker 5: first time that I started my independent research program myself.
36:50
Speaker 5: So it was my wasp, my thing. But also we
36:55
Speaker 5: sequenced the genome of it. And I know that's terribly
36:57
Speaker 5: boring now. Everyone's sequencing genomes. But it was the first
37:00
Speaker 5: aculeate wasp genome, apart from nozonia parasitoid. It was the
37:04
Speaker 5: first aculeate wasp genome to be sequenced. So I feel
37:07
Speaker 5: that that has to be my favorite.
37:09
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say the Heath Potter was.
37:11
Speaker 4: Oh, well, you know what? I think, yeah.
37:13
Speaker 1: Well, let you have two.
37:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, you know, it's
37:17
Speaker 4: like you can't have a favourite child, can you?
37:22
Speaker 1: No, you're absolutely right.
37:23
Speaker 4: I absolutely love those.
37:25
Speaker 5: And, you know, John Walters, who taught me how to
37:28
Speaker 5: find them, was on the Heathlands of Dorset, was just
37:32
Speaker 5: really inspirational. And I think, sadly, I've not had much
37:34
Speaker 5: chance to work on them since the pandemic. So, you know,
37:38
Speaker 5: most of my work was being done in the tropics.
37:40
Speaker 5: And then the pandemic happened and we couldn't go anywhere.
37:43
Speaker 5: And so I had to.
37:44
Speaker 4: Look at wasps on my doorstep. And I realized, actually,
37:47
Speaker 4: we've got a huge number of incredible wasps in the UK.
37:50
Speaker 5: And the Potter wasp was one of them. And they
37:53
Speaker 5: are very, very endearing. But they're really hard to work
37:56
Speaker 5: on because they're hard to find. You know, you read
37:59
Speaker 5: in my book how it's impossible to.
38:00
Speaker 4: Find these little pots.
38:02
Speaker 5: Um and you have to run across the heathland trying
38:06
Speaker 5: to following this wasp and not not looking down um
38:09
Speaker 5: because you'll lose the wasp um but then i mean
38:12
Speaker 5: they are exquisite they build these beautiful sort of romanesque
38:15
Speaker 5: style pots um and uh solitary wasps they they hunt
38:19
Speaker 5: caterpillars um and they you know they're just really really
38:23
Speaker 5: beautiful so i you know i could actually be in
38:25
Speaker 5: love with every single wasp you give me another wasp
38:27
Speaker 5: and i will tell you.
38:28
Speaker 1: How well thank you very much um Sarian for telling
38:32
Speaker 1: us about wasps and coming on the podcast. And I mean,
38:35
Speaker 1: our listeners really should read your book. It's Endless Forms.
38:39
Speaker 1: And I've forgotten the subtitle. There's a subtitle.
38:41
Speaker 4: Why you should love wasps.
38:44
Speaker 1: And I mean, your enthusiasm for wasps is really evident
38:48
Speaker 1: in this podcast, but it comes across in the book
38:50
Speaker 1: as well. And it really is a must read for everyone.
38:53
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for coming on. We really
38:56
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Wow. Well, what did you think of that then, Simon?
39:01
Speaker 1: Do you now think you should have perhaps behaved a
39:04
Speaker 1: little differently when you had your supper or did you
39:07
Speaker 1: get it right?
39:08
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're asking, do you think I should
39:10
Speaker 3: have sat down and stroked the wasps? Then no, I
39:13
Speaker 3: think I got it right, actually. But no, it was fascinating.
39:16
Speaker 3: I mean, just the different, I hadn't realised there were
39:18
Speaker 3: so many different types of wasps.
39:21
Speaker 1: No, I mean, they're incredibly speciose group. And They range
39:25
Speaker 1: from these parasitic ones, these parasitoid wasps, as you said,
39:28
Speaker 1: that lay there. eggs in all sorts of other insects
39:32
Speaker 1: i think nearly every insect has its own wasp that
39:35
Speaker 1: does that and the one that she talked about the
39:38
Speaker 1: jewel wasp that preys on the american cockroach and it
39:42
Speaker 1: actually stings it and then it leads the zombified cockroach
39:46
Speaker 1: to its layer where it then lays its eggs in.
39:49
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't know that story, but it was
39:50
Speaker 1: in our book. But it is quite remarkable, to be honest.
39:53
Speaker 3: I mean, it's more horrific than most sort of fictional
39:56
Speaker 3: science fiction stories, right?
39:58
Speaker 1: No, no. And then, I mean, the other thing that
40:01
Speaker 1: I think is interesting is that earlier on in the season, the,
40:05
Speaker 1: you know, so the adult wasps are vegetarian, the yellow
40:07
Speaker 1: jackets that we get around picnics and things, the ones
40:10
Speaker 1: that kept you from your dinner the other day. Those ones,
40:13
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that the adults are vegetarian, but
40:16
Speaker 1: they feed their brood, the young meat, and then they
40:20
Speaker 1: lick off the sugar solution. But then when the brood
40:23
Speaker 1: start to kind of, you know, become adult wasps themselves,
40:27
Speaker 1: they're not getting that sugar solution. That's why they come
40:30
Speaker 1: and drink your wine.
40:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
40:33
Speaker 1: And what have you, anything sugary.
40:35
Speaker 3: It's an intriguing sort of evolutionary path that's got them there, right?
40:39
Speaker 3: I mean, it's fascinating to think how that all came about.
40:42
Speaker 1: I know, and they get such a bad press as well,
40:45
Speaker 1: you know, no one likes wasps because they hurt when
40:48
Speaker 1: they sting, you know, they fly around together, they do
40:50
Speaker 1: that thing where they zigzag in front of you when
40:52
Speaker 1: they're trying to work out what they're looking at, and
40:58
Speaker 1: so they get this bad press, but Actually, you know,
41:01
Speaker 1: they're important predators in the ecosystem. And without them, we'd
41:05
Speaker 1: have a lot more pest insects and we'd probably moan
41:08
Speaker 1: more about them. So hopefully our listeners will start to
41:11
Speaker 1: appreciate wasps a little bit more. And we'll go and
41:15
Speaker 1: read Sarian's book.
41:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
41:18
Speaker 3: And I would say that also if you're having a
41:21
Speaker 3: mango margarita.
41:22
Speaker 1: Is that what you were having with your soup, was it?
41:25
Speaker 2: Yes. A chili mango margarita. Keep away. Yeah, just sort of,
41:30
Speaker 2: you know, the wasps seem to like them quite a lot.
41:33
Speaker 1: I think the thing is, don't panic. Chances of getting
41:37
Speaker 1: stung if you're just ignoring them is pretty slim. I mean,
41:40
Speaker 1: it's not zero. They still might, but it's pretty slim.
41:44
Speaker 1: But I hope people, I mean, I think Sarin was
41:48
Speaker 1: just a fantastic advocate for wasps.
41:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
41:51
Speaker 1: So enthusiastic. So enthusiastic. You know, what a great guest.
41:55
Speaker 1: And her book is well worth a read, Endless Forms,
41:58
Speaker 1: it's called. Absolutely.
41:59
Speaker 3: And we'll provide the links with this episode, guys.
42:03
Speaker 2: So please take a look.
42:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent. Okay, well, good to chat, Simon. And I'll
42:08
Speaker 1: talk to you next week.
42:10
Speaker 2: Cool, look forward to it, Tim. Take care.
42:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you. Bye, everyone.