S3E5: Order UP!

S3:E5 Order UP!

In Episode V of this season of The Entangled Bank, Spencer, Dane, Colby, and Joey dive into a discussion of the fascinating insect order Hymenoptera. This is order is comprised of over 150,000 species of bees, wasps, sawflies, and ants. Hymenoptera came into being about 252 million years ago during the Triassic period. The different insects in this order share similar characteristics such as two pairs of thin, see-through wings, chewing mouthparts, and compound eyes. In this podcast we focused on the different suborders within Hymenoptera to detail some of their unique attributes. 

(https://projects.ncsu.edu/cals/course/ent425/library/compendium/hymenoptera.html)

Spencer kicked off our discussion with bees. Bees have very interesting aging and development patterns. For example, male bees only live on average for 4-8 weeks while queen bees can live for multiple years! Bees are also some of the most common social insects and have a highly developed form of chemical communication. Bees are also known to communicate through a variety of dances. Spencer also described what a typical healthy bee colony looks like and what nutritive requirements bees have. Perhaps most relevant to our everyday lives, Spencer highlighted the recent widespread decline of bee populations across North America, some possible sources of the decline, what agricultural implications the decline has. 

(http://www.truth-seeker.info/refuting-darwinism/bees-methods-communication/)

(https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/bees-appear-able-to-comprehend-the-concept-of-zero-48399)

The second group we looked at in Hymenoptera was ants with Colby leading the way. Ants are the most diverse social insects with 12,500 described species and with just as many undescribed species. Just like other social organisms, ants have a stratified social caste system including queens, males, and workers. Ants are important pollinators, aid plants in seed dispersal, and play an important role in nutrient cycling. These processes are very important for entire ecosystems to thrive. Ants also have some interesting mutualistic relationships with other insects and even fungi. Some of these mutualistic relationships have expanded into obligatory mutualism, for example some fungi have been fully domesticated by ants and rely on the ants for survival. 

(https://elegantentomology.weebly.com/leaf-cutter-ants.html)

(https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/ants-are-destroying-your-plants-by-nurturing-perfect-aphid-colonies/)

The third group we discussed was sawflies with Joey serving as our in house expert. Sawflies are the outgroup to the rest of the Hymenoptera as they do not possess the petiole, known as the wasp waist. Another unique characteristic of sawflies is that while the other suborders’ ovipositors have been modified into stingers, the sawflies’ ovipositor has been modified into a saw like structure for carving into wood, leaves, and other substances to lay their eggs. Joey also describes an interesting predator defense mechanism sawfly larvae have evolved. The larvae will shoot hemolymph (insect blood) at the attacking predator. This defense mechanism comes at a cost as it can cause the larvae to become weak and die. Sawflies spend most of their lives in a larval stage during which they feast on the leaves of different plants, leaving behind a recognizable wave pattern in the leaves. 

(http://www.natureconservationimaging.com/Pages/nature_conservation_imaging_woodland_hedgerow_sawflies.php)

(https://www.bumblebee.org/invertebrates/Hymenoptera1.htm)

(https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/pest-and-disease-resources/elm-zigzag-sawfly/)

We left the best for last having Dane guide us through the interesting ways of wasps. These fascinating insects possess a wasp waist/petiole and some possess stingers at the end of their abdomen. The brightness of the yellow in wasps has been correlated positively with bigger venom glands, serving as a warning to would be predators.  Some species of wasps are parasitic. These wasps take advantage of other organisms as part of their life cycle. This parasitism can be helpful to humans as a means to effectively, and cheaply, control the populations of pests which has some positive agricultural implications. Wasps can be helpful to humans in other ways too, for example some species of wasps in Brazil can be used as bioindicators for both disturbed forests and undisturbed forests. Wasps also display a humorous behavior when competing with ants for food. They have been observed picking up ants, flying them into the air, and dropping them to reduce the number of ants they must compete with for food.

(https://www.biodiversityscience.com/2011/11/01/mapping-fig-wasp-across-continents/)

https://www.actionpest.com/eastern-yellow-jackets

(http://www.icrisat.org/what-we-do/crops/PigeonPea/Archives/tsrmhm.htm)

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