Today is World Wasp Day Here are 10 things you might not know about wasps:
There are 30,000 identified species of wasps. There are about 9,000 different species in the UK alone. Of these, only nine live in nests. The rest are solitary. Nor are wasps always Black and Yellow. They come in a variety of different colours.
They belong to the insect sub-order Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera. Black and yellow wasps (yellowjackets) and hornets are in the family Vespidae.
The largest wasp is the Asian giant hornet, which can grow to to 5 centimetres (2.0 in) in length. The smallest is the fairy wasp which is just a millimeter long and is therefore not only the smallest wasp but the smallest insect known to science.
People often ask, what is the point of wasps? All they seem to do is gatecrash picnics. Well, they are important pollinators, even though they’re slightly less good at it than Bees. They can be quite specialist: almost every one of the 1000 species of tropical Fig trees has its own specific fig wasp (Chalcidoidea) that has co-evolved with it and pollinates it. Some wasps prey on pests such as aphids. In fact, nearly every pest on Earth is preyed upon by a species of wasp, even clothes moths. They’re also scavengers, munching on dead insects and collecting them to feed their larvae. So they do have a useful function.
Worker wasps feed protein rich food to the larvae and in turn the larvae produce sugars and carbohydrates to feed the workers. It’s when the larvae have all matured that the workers have to go looking for sugary food elsewhere, around late August. Their natural choice would be rotting fruit, but human picnics are a handy source of sugars as well.
Only female social wasps sting, and only in self defence. The stingers are actually a modified egg-laying organ. Solitary wasps use their stingers and venom for hunting.
Wasp sting venom has a “smell” which can be detected by other wasps, and this is left behind when a wasp stings a person, effectively marking that person as a threat, and making other wasps more aggressive towards them.
Wasps can recognise each other by their unique facial patterns.
Wasps first appeared in the fossil record in the Jurassic, and diversified into many surviving superfamilies by the Cretaceous.
An irrational fear of wasps is called spheksophobia.
Character Birthday
From A Jack To A King
A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.
A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.
Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.
Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.
When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.
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