Some wasps and bees are able to recognize sick nestmates by smell and can prevent their entry into the nest to avert infection of the entire colony, assuring its survival and that of the species in the long run.
Plants & Animals
Dec 8, 2023
0
84
At first glance, the hexagonal cells build by honey bees and social wasps may seem similar, but they are significantly different. Honey bees build using wax, whereas wasps use paper. Honey bees build their double-sided combs ...
Evolution
Jul 27, 2023
0
301
It's spring in England. The daffodils are in full bloom. A queen yellowjacket (Vespula) wasp emerges from your loft, dopey with hibernation and hungry for nectar. She starts to build a paper nest in which to raise a family. ...
Evolution
Mar 31, 2023
0
591
Since Darwin, biologists have been fascinated by the evolution of sociality. In its most extreme form, eusocial species exhibit a division of labor in which certain individuals perform reproductive tasks such as egg laying, ...
Evolution
Jan 31, 2023
0
2
An international team of biologists and theoretical physicists from Dresden (Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems), Cambridge, UK (Babraham Institute) and Athens (B.S.R.C. "Alexander Fleming") has tackled ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 23, 2022
0
222
Just as humans are challenged from the social isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a new study finds that a solitary lifestyle has profound effects on the brains of a social insect: paper wasps.
Plants & Animals
Apr 14, 2021
0
208
Paper wasps eavesdrop on fighting rivals to rapidly assess potential opponents without personal risk. This new finding adds to mounting evidence that even mini-brained insects have an impressive capacity to learn, remember ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 25, 2020
0
257
Common wasp species could be valuable at sustainably managing crop pests, finds a new UCL-led experimental study in Brazil.
Ecology
Nov 11, 2019
0
251
A new University of Michigan study provides the first evidence of transitive inference, the ability to use known relationships to infer unknown relationships, in a nonvertebrate animal: the lowly paper wasp.
Plants & Animals
May 7, 2019
0
982
It sounds like the plot of the world's tiniest horror movie: deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a newly discovered species of wasp transforms a "social" spider into a zombie-like drone that abandons its colony to do the wasp's ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 27, 2018
0
425
