The long genital stings of male wasps can save their lives

Pushing away the gladiator’s attacker with two genital stingers turns out to be a moderately useful form of self-defense for male vespers, demonstrating an unusual interest. The spikes on the back of mason wasps become useless when delivering sperm, but they can save their lives.

Male wasps (and bees) do not grow venomous stings. Women’s arms are those that are developed with the equipment of childbirth. Instead, the male species of mason wasp combats the gluttony of tree frogs (and collecting entomologists) by developing a pair of stingers that are developed along with the male’s genital apparatus to form a swarm of wasps.

they are just pseudo-thorns. It is not poisonous, but a male wasp can sting an attacking frog in the mouth and mouth.

“Our study is the first to demonstrate the defense mechanisms of pseudo-stings in target wasps,” says ecologist Shinji Sugiura of Kobe University in Japan. Biologists have known about stingers for a long time, but a new study, published on December 19 Current Biologyproves how well they work.

The inspiration came from Sugiura’s student and co-author, Misaki Tsujii, who painted the mare collecting. Anterhynchium gibbifrons wasp mason

Female mason wasps use a real stinger tool to block multiple caterpillars as still-living and fresh baby food. A mom builds zombified rocket seals in a private nursery for each child.

Males, without true stinging power, can still deliver “sting” pains, says Sugiura. To see how much protection the burrowing offered, the researchers put a variety of starving frogs in the lab.

Each of the 17 males caught with a pond frog (Pelophylax nigromaculatus) I ate in spite of the sting. Exercises with the tree frog Dryophytes japonicayet it is told otherwise.

The male wasps resisted, and that with some success at times. Their genital spines “were often observed to pierce the frog’s mouth,” the researchers report. The lab video shows a tree frog batting its weak legs against a wasp that was violently spitting out the frog’s wide mouth. The frogs eventually rejected six of the 17 wasps. The wasp’s offering with its stings removed, yet all the frogs ate on the tree.

Judging by Tsujii’s own reaction to being pseudo-struck by one of these male wasps, they don’t sound like pleasant snacks. She affects the pain in 1 0-4 Schmidt’s pain as the sting of the agony of birth from no one to, non-technically, tied in a hot lava bath.SN: 7/24/16). the sting of honey gives pain 2

“I can now testify from personal experience that the male’s pseudo-stings are used … in defense,” says James Carpenter, an American wasp specialist at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. “I’ve been stung by them many times, and they can be quite annoying because they elicit a surprising response and the wasps drop.”

Despite the latter position, however, “stings do not appear to be used in intercourse,” says Carpenter. On such occasions, they “go out of the way”.

Sugiura and Tsujii also checked that if the male rejected the female in courtship, they would use their spines in some way to overcome that objection. No, the researchers say after examining 10 specimens and seven rejections: Spines in this species appear to be only defensive.

Male stingers, called parameral stingers, are also displayed in other species of wasps, but in those species they have not experienced defensive power. But the possibility that the stings still have some sexual function should be considered, says Menno Schilthuizen, an evolutionary ecologist at the Center for Natural Biodiversity and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

The male genitalia of many insects have accessory structures such as spines, flagellum or spikes, he says. The rest “outside the female body during intercourse … does not mean that they do not act in reproduction.” In many species, the female’s abdomen is tapped or tapped in what is known as copulatory courtship, increasing the male’s chance that the female will actually use his sperm to fertilize the eggs.”

Few studies, even in non-wasps, have documented genital activity for self-defense. Sugiura and Tsujii cite another example from the hawks. These large, nocturnal foragers use their genital structure to create standing rubs, which interferes with the echo frequency of moth-hunting bats (SN: 7/3/13).

Investigating genital structures in terms of defense rather than just lures is important, the researchers argue, in large part because it’s not common. Looking forward to death, researchers offer a “new perspective” on aspects of genital development. And there is a wonderful variety to be rendered in the evolution of the forms of the genitals.