The Wasp

Hello wonderful people who read my blogs! ^^

Today, I've been a very very busy little worker bee, I've spent the past 3 hours taking photos of the different insects in my garden. There are sooo many out today! In fact, I have enough photos to make another 3 blog posts!

I've been on the hunt for wasps this time, you have NO IDEA how hard they are to catch, not to mention get photos of. My gosh, they kept me on the run the entire time, but with patience I finally got not one, but 3 wasp species! and I'll mash them all up into one blog post! Okay! Lets begin!

The Wasp (Order: Hymenoptera Suborder: Apocrita)

Ok let's begin with my first wasp, The Mud Dauber (Sceliphron spirifex) This is fairly large wasp species, he belongs to the family Sphecidae, they measure in at about 2-3cm, these guy have long yellow and black banded legs that hang down loosely while they fly, this is the typical manner that all wasps fly in. Their wings are also fairly thin and long. The mud Dauber, also called the Mud Wasp makes a large mud nest, The nest has many many little cells that the wasp puts food in for it's babies. The food consists mainly of Spiders that the wasp has hunted down, killed and placed into the cell. The cells once filled with food are then sealed off with more mud. This is where the eggs are laid, the babies then hatch and feed on the food their mother has provided for them. These nests can be found anywhere from bridges to buildings, to trees.

This wasp has a long spindly thin body as you will see here in the photo.



Unfortunately there was no other way to get a photo of this wasp, it kept on eluding me and forced me to capture it.

Okay! Next wasp!

These next two are part of the same family of Paper wasps (Vespidae) this is good because now I'll be able to show you the small differences that different species have in a family.

This one's scientific name is Polistes Fastidiotus, He is the smaller of the wasps, measuring at about 1-2cm. Now the reason these guys are called paper wasps, is because of the nests they make. Small little nests made out of a paper like substance, shaped like an umbrella and separated into small hexagonal cells. They usually hang down from roofs of buildings. These wasps are considered very useful to gardeners because they eat pests that destroy plants.

This guy has a striped body and black wings, as you can see here. A smooth oblong abdomen and redish body.




Ok, now for the comparing, my favourite part!

This next paper wasps' scientific name is Ropalidia. The main difference this wasp has with Polistes is that he has a swollen first segment of his abdomen, and is typically a plain brown colour. He also has a slightly rounder bigger body than the slender Polistes. Another difference is the nests they make. These nests are elongated, same building technique though, paper substance and divided into cells. Only, Polistes makes a round nest and Ropalidia makes an oval nest.



Wasps, as we know can sting, but unlike bees, they can sting multiple times. Paper wasps, and wasps in general, are nothing to be afraid of, they only attack if they are in danger, or their nest is in danger (i.e someone throws a rock at it) you can see in the second picture I gave, the one of Polistes fastidiotus, you can see that the wasp is pretty comfortable with having me there, it made no effort to fly away. And even with the third picture of Ropalidia, I had captured it and let it go on my window, it let me take pictures of it without attacking me, and then flew out.

Don't get me wrong though, you should still be cautious, is a group of wasps are provoked, they can easily kill you, One single sting, will only do serious harm to someone who is allergic. But Groups of wasps can be dangerous.

Now onto something, slightly scary and disturbing. What makes a wasp sting hurt so much?

I'll go through it step by step.

Step 1: The venom is injected into our blood stream.

Step 2: Peptides and enzymes eat away at the cell membrane of different cells, if the membrane of a neuron (Nerve Cell) is breached, the neuron sends a signal to the brain. This is the pain that we experience, it's basically a warning signal to tell us something is wrong.

Step 3: Now you'd think that the pain wouldn't last long, because the venom would be instantly diluted into the blood, BUT, substances in the venom, like norepinephrine, actually slow and even stop the flow of blood, allowing the venom to cause pain for a good few minutes, until the blood finally manages to take the diluted venom away.

Step 4: While the enzymes are eating at the cells, hyaluronidase and Mass cell degranulating peptide pave a path through the joints of each cell by melting through them, allowing the enzymes to attack other cells in the area. This causes the swelling and redness that we get at each sting site.

Scary when you look at it from a different perspective huh? One one hand, a sting is a sting, people will go, "meh, it just hurts a bit and swells up, nothing too serious."

But on the other hand...yeah...mass murder of body cells.

I hope you found today's blog post interesting!! I'll have many many more to come, I just need to do a little research to find out what the heck some of the insects I just photographed are. XP

As for me! Simon out!! *buzzes away*