Why Are Wasps Good Insects?
Wasps can be social, meaning they live in groups, or solitary. They are commonly known as hornets, yellow jackets, and paper wasps. Some construct nests out of paper made from wood pulp and saliva, and others live underground. In urban and suburban areas, the most common wasp is the paper wasp. Does this Spark an idea?
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Identification
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Wasps are of the order Hymenoptera. They have hard bodies with two pairs of membranous wings. All adults have chewing mouth parts, but in some wasps certain mouth parts are modified into tongue like structures used for drinking liquids. They have a thin waist, called the pedicel, between the base of the abdomen and the thorax.
Life Cycle
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A wasp colony will live for only a single season. The only resident who will survive the winter is the newly hatched queen, who will start a new colony in the spring. Metamorphosis is complete, which means they have four distinct stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult.
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Food Source
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Wasps provide a food source for animals such as birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and other insects. Wasps have a protein content of 81 percent, the highest of all edible insects. They are consumed in Mexico, and fried wasps with boiled rice, sugar and soy sauce was a favorite dish of Emperor Hirohito of Japan.
Pollination
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The high energy needs of a wasp are met by ingesting the nectar from various flowers. The lack of hair on the wasp makes it a less efficient pollinator than a bee, because the pollen is less likely to stick to their smooth bodies. Despite this, wasps are still an important pollinator. In the tropics, fig wasps pollinate more than 1,000 species of figs.
Pest Control
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While most adult wasps eat nectar, their larvae are parasitic.The bracanid wasp lays its eggs on hornworms.The larvae burrow inside the host, eventually killing it. Other wasp larvae target multiple insects, such as the torymid wasps, which live as parasites on the larvae of gall insects, beetles, butterflies and moths. Golden-yellow chalcid wasps produce many larvae with a single egg by hypermetamorphosis, a type of asexual reproduction. This quality makes them valued as a biological pest control.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit wasp image by Marian Maier from Fotolia.com
