Archive
THINK BEFORE YOU SWAT!
30/05/2024
The instincts of many of us when we see a wasp or a spider, for example, is to kill them, but maybe we should first consider the results of recent research before we do. Work with insects, arachnids and other invertebrates is revealing them to have what can well be described as intelligence and even, perhaps, a form of consciousness!
Research by Jernigan, Freiwald & Sheehan[1] on social wasps indicates that they recognise other wasps of their colony. It has even been suggested they use brain cells like the ones we humans and other primates have to recognise each other, but that is very speculative.
There are many species of social wasps which build large nests and live colonially, like our common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) and hornet (Vespa crabro), and they have distinctive facial patterns, not only between species but also, more subtly, between individuals. At Cornell University, the researchers worked on a social wasp called the northern paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus, and found the insects could individually recognise their colony females (i.e. their sisters) from their faces. The investigators used tiny probes to record wasp brain cells as they fired when presented with wasp faces, and detected nearly 800 firing neurons, of which thirty-five fired when the wasps were shown frontal-view facial images – and, tellingly, these neurons fired at different rates for different wasp faces shown to them, indicating they may be encoding data about identity. That the wasps can do this is certainly remarkable but has probably evolved to assist colony collaboration.
[1] Jernigan, C.M., Freiwald, W.A. & Sheehan, M.J. (2024). Journal reference: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.11.589095
Moving on to spiders, in some ways recent research is even more exciting. A few spider species live in colonies, especially in the tropics. Most, though, are generally solitary, but it seems their brains have a special relationship with their webs such that the web is a sort of extension of their minds. It has even been suggested that their ability to learn, plan and predict might even mean they have a kind of consciousness. Spiders have been on Earth a very long time – 400 million years or so – and there are probably some 50,000 different species today, with every square metre of land occupied by perhaps 130 of them. Their webs are constructed in a planned fashion to fit around a specific place they choose where they are likely to catch prey. Not only that, but their silk (basically chains glycine and alanine amino acids which they comb from their spinnerets with their hind legs, can have different compositions to suit a particular requirement for the place and purpose. Although each spider species has a generally typical web type, they can tailor them for required circumstances.
There is a good article with much more about this and the remarkable cognitive abilities of spiders at https://bit.ly/brightspiders.
At Betts Ecology, as you must know by now because I keep reminding everyone, we protect and enhance invertebrate habitats and do not use pesticides on vegetation, so insects and spiders can thrive to continue to enrich our world. If you want a really challenging and stimulating hobby, take up entomology!
Photos © the author.
