A peek into the world of wasps

Wasps.

Waspie - a narrow corseted waist. 

Waspish - kind of quick to anger and irritation.  (My state quite often to be honest) 

WASP - White Anglo Saxon Protestant - considered to be one of the most powerful groups in the US.

I am wary of these paper wasps that are nesting outside our study window.  I treat them respectfully.  The nest has grown in size, in front of my very eyes.

They haven't troubled us so far, and we have left them alone. I see them going to the flowers in my balcony and feeding on the nectar in the Kopsia flowers.

And yet, so little do I know about these winged insects.  The MNS Wasp Walk on 26th April was a perfect Wasp 101 then.  Who better than Yuvan to tell us all about these insects.

I did not know - 

Wasps are powerful.

Pest controllers
Pollinators
Paralysers
Proficient architects designers
Progressive Provisioners  

Parasitoid Proliferators

Not necessarily stingers.

 

 

Our walk started at the rear of the TS library, where each window and every ledge had a story to be told.

 

There were solitary yellow mud daubers that made mud nests, with an egg a chamber.  The brilliant  metallic flashes of the Blue mud dauber, that can repurpose abandoned nests, cleaning them out before occupying them, 

 

Potterwasps with their small individual "pots" - there was one such in my mother's window frame, I remember - that she preserved for the longest time, until my father passed on, and it could not be protected.  The losses and the absences intertwined in my mind.

 

Her garden also has sand wasps whose company I kept through Covid lockdown. 
 

Anyways, back to the walk and the library walls.  

Blue Mud-dauber Wasp (Chalybion bengalense) - Photo by Hrishu

Yuvan explained that these Chalybion genus  wasps will use old wasp nests, softening them with water, and then they don't look so well built - as you can see - and they zombiefy spiders, lay eggs on them and seal the cell with lime from our building walls (the white cap you see).  Meanwhile the egg hatches, the larva will munch on the spiders, pupate and then when ready to emerge as an adult, will chew through that lime cap and emerge!!    It truly sounds like a Sci Fi story -  Alien with Sigourney Weaver - and here I thought there was some imagination at work, instead it is the story of wasps on a grander scale, where instead of the zombie spiders there are zombie humans.  

We came around the building and headed for the Premna tree which is another favourite of wasps - Yuvan mentioned how one morning they identified 40 species of wasps on a flowering Premna!  As we waited, for the sun to fall on the tree and wasp activity to increase, I looked at the other trees around.   The Rangoon Creeper was in full bloom as was the Neem with its delicate white flowers, the  Adenanthera pavonina was in pods that were still green, the Weeping Fig had fruits, making it look like a Maghizham, and the tamarind trees were heavy with ripening fruit that I eyed longingly. 

I saw a Black Pearl tree for the first time in bloom.  Those blue-black seeds standing out against the sky.

We wandered around the lily pond, watching the Stingless bees buzz around the lily that looked like it was lit from within.

As we returned to the Premna, the wasp action was heating up.  Yuvan also filled us in with so many incredible facts about these insects.

• All species of insects have a parasitoid wasp that attacks their eggs, larva and adults - and so wasps are the biggest natural "pesticide" or bio-control agents, if you will call it that.  If there were no wasps, there would be much more crop destruction.  Experiments have been done to introduce wasps as pest controllers and result have been encouraging.
• The paper wasps breakdown of celluose and plant fiber was the inspration for paper-making starting in China and there is some relation to the first attempts at ink as well. 
• I learnt about the work of Prof Raghavendra Gadagkar of the IISc, who has studied the paper wasps (similar to the ones outside my window) and eusocial behavior among insects.  Some esoteric concepts of how the Queen wasp becomes the queen wasp more by pheromone control rather than by aggression.  I looked up the professor and came across this great talk Inside the Wasp Nest: Understanding Insect Societies where he describes how ants, bees, wasps and termites live in complex societies, and how the Ropalidia marginata society is unique in the way they choose their queen, without a nest-wide aggression.  I was fascinated with the "common sense" experimental designs that he explains - from paint-tagging wasps to identify and differentiate (since they all look the same including the queen) to creating mesh barriers and removing the queen and putting her back.
• Yuvan mentioned JH Tumlinson, whom I looked up - he has worked on insect-plant interactions and the role of chemical signals in these interactions, especially with wasps.  He has studied how plants respond to herbivore damage and how insects exploit plant signals for finding hosts or defenses.  All pretty cool stuff.  Among his entomological findings were that plants attacked by feeding insects have the capability to synthesize and release volatile organic chemicals.  These chemicals  then attract small parasitoid wasps, that in turn locate and parasitize the caterpillars.  This "wasp calling" synamone chemical  of the plant is induced by compounds in the oral secretion of the caterpillars.
• Tumlinson passed away in 2022, but he has mentored many students in the area of wasps and Ted Turlings is one such, and he's working on the synamones emitted by maize that "call" the specific parasitoid wasp to rescue it from the caterpillars! (He's also a birdwatcher in his spare time, I like that!)

Back to the Premna then, where the action had begun.  Yuvan would point to various flitting creatures and reel off various names.  I managed to spot a few, but many moved too fast for me, and I was my usual plaintive self, asking where, where and being told oh it just flew off to the rear branch or it just moved out of sight.

 

But Hrishu and Girish got some great photos.  Girish is till giving me photos, but here are some of Hrishu's.

 

This photo by Hrishu of a Spider Wasp - they hunt spiders.  I did see this with my binoculars.

The Ammophila sand wasp which obliged us by staying still, so we all got a good look.  Generative AI informes me that - "Ammophila wasps are known for their unique nesting behavior, including provisioning their burrows with paralyzed caterpillars for their larvae."  (Yuvan mentioned it, but I had forgotten it in the information overload of the morning.). Hrishu's photo

 

Photo by Hrishu of Orange spotted flower wasp that I sadly missed. 

There were other bees, spiders  and moths that were spotted but I shall ignore them for the moment and end with the Robber fly that was pretty spectacularly perched.

 

I was very pleased as I managed to actually "see" and locate this Assasin fly on that far away branch, and was not at the receving end of Hrishu and Girish directional instruction to tell Elu where it was.  It is definitely easier with birds!  Hrishu's photo shows the powerfully built robber fly with a honey bee prey that it was probably sucking away from the inside.  It has probably injected the bee with saliva containing neurotoxic enzymes which has paralyzed the bee and will soon digest the insides also; the fly then sucks the liquefied bee's innards through the proboscis. Oops - there's another scifi story scenario.

 

Soon it was time to leave and even though I was sweating buckets in the humidity and stillness of the April morning, the wasps had kept me engrossed.

 

 I am sure more wasp posts will get blogged, as I document the paper wasps inspired by this session.  Thanks to MNS and Yuvan.

And thanks to Yuvan and the Palluyir team for this very handy book with great pictures and simple writing in English and Tamil.

 

 

MNS member Venky Ramaswamy said:

It was wonderful to meet Yuvan Aves for the very first time at the Wasp Walk yesterday! After a brief, we were then introduced to building of nests by wasps – on the walls, below the ceilings, underneath the sun-shades, and on the wooden frames of the windows, etc. I have destroyed many of these nests, many a times during my lifetime, with almost negligible knowledge. One of the key messages I picked up from today’s walk was the phenomenal contribution of the wasps to the society, and the need to appreciate their crucial roles, and learn to co-exist. Yuvan stood in front of a small tree, with bright green leaves, white flowers, and tiny fluorescent fruit bloom. It was Premna Serratifolia. During one of his wasp surveys on the campus, he observed forty different species of wasps, pollinating this tree. Every direction he was pointing, we
 
were zooming in our cameras and binoculars. Yuvan was full of information and we were overwhelmed by his vast, oops...wasp knowledge! Wealth of information about how plants communicate with wasps, presence of flower wasps indicate the quality of soil, and also act as an amazing pollinator, memory guilds of greater banded hornet and its reference in Agananuru – a classical Tamil poetic work of Sangam literature, and so on. The session almost came to an end, with a Vaa Ma Minnal punch, when we were pointed to watch an act of courtship behavior of paper wasps! It was an awesome learning experience. Best Wishes Yuvan. Thanks to Palluyir Trust Team, for the amazing book with extensive research on Wasps. Kudos!

There are clear photos of the wasps that I commonly see, as also wasp nests.  The book is available as a free download here.

There was a second wasp walk on the 3rd of May, where Arvind and Jomi kept another bunch of members enthralled, and Sagarika's pictures are here.

 

She says:

 

On a sultry May morning, 18 of us nature enthusiasts gathered at the library gate for a wasp walk led by two young naturalists, Aravind and Jomi. Aravind opened the walk by highlighting the stark contrast in how we view two vital pollinators - bees are cherished, wasps on the other hand, are often feared and despised.

During the walk, we learned about the true democratic aspects of wasp societies, their nest- building behaviour, their stings and more. Karna and Tarun, two young participants, asked insightful questions throughout, keeping everyone engaged and Aravind on his toes.

We explored the remarkable diversity of wasp nests—each unique in location and material. Highlights included the nests of cluster wasps, tube-maker and ridged-nest potter wasps (the latter using a cement-like substance), and a blue mud dauber nest tucked inside an old lock’s keyhole. As we searched for sand wasps, some of us spotted a striking velvet ant (which, despite its name, is actually a type of wasp), clearly the highlight of the day.

We also enjoyed observing Ammophila, which, due to its size, was easy to spot and photograph. Several Vespidae wasps zipped overhead, becoming more active as the sun grew stronger.

Fascinating facts flowed throughout the walk—like how some plants release chemicals to attract wasps for pollination, even without insect threats, and how parasitoid wasps earn their name as they ultimately end up killing their hosts- good for pest/insect control I thought.

The wasp walk was both fun and enlightening, highlighting the vital role of wasps in the ecosystem and helping us appreciate these misunderstood creatures.

Now, if the Velvet ant is a wasp, then why call it an ant?  It is confusing as it is, and mimicry in the natural world is rife, but we humans can atleast name them appropriately can't we?  Just saying.