"Good" wasps?

[urbpan]

Comments

[lyonesse]

i would. ichneumons are awesome. there's some great writings on them too, though i don't know how literary your class will be

[urbpan]

There are. I probably shouldn't tell these kids that Darwin considered the ichneumon evidence that there was no good God.

[lyonesse]

bernd heinrich's father was a serious student of ichneumons, and some of that has come through into heinrich's writing as well. obviously they didn't much hold with darwin ;)

[jocosa]

I wish I could attend, I'd love to learn about all that. I've always been curious about wasps.

That's not its stinger, is it?

[urbpan]

That is her ovipositor, with which she places eggs into the bodies of host animals (other insect larvae, usually) which are hiding in burrows in wood. Some wasps have evolved venom glands in concert with their ovipositors, turning this reproductive organ into a weapon. In social wasps and bees (and ants) the workers are sterile females--their ovipositors have turned into non-egg-laying stingers.

Some ichneumon wasps will defend themselves by jabbing an attacker with their ovipositor.

[jocosa]

OoooOoo that is really an interesting fact. Thank you. :)

Someday, if you ever want to write a post on wasps, I would not mind one little bit. *grin*

[urbpan]

I guarantee I will write several. And if you have any more questions about anything else in particular I'm happy to oblige.

Why are there wasps?

[dedhamoutdoors]

I just spent about 20 minutes trying to track down the facebook post from a few days ago that I vaguely recall being about Sir David Attenborough's response to a question about wasps. I finally found it - of course, it was you who posted it in the first place.

Re: Why are there wasps?

[urbpan]

I wondered if that might happen!

[badnoodles]

Ichneumons are a great example of coevolution in action - every time their hosts develop a new evasion strategy, the wasps develop a new way to reach them.