Male wasps sting the “enemy” with their genitals

Male wasps do not have a stinger, but their penises have very effective spines, which they use to avoid becoming a meal for predators, research published today reveals.

Thanks to an accidental sting, Japanese scientists discovered this defense mechanism of the males, which, unlike the females, do not have a venomous stinger.

Despite their weakness, however, they succeed and escape from their pursuers thanks to a behavior that was not fully understood until today. Scientists had assumed that some male insects could “sting” with their genitalia but had no proof, explained Shinji Sugiura of Kobe University, one of the authors of the study published in the scientific journal Current Biology.

Sugiura, who is an expert on the “defense strategy” of animals against predators, was present when one of his students, Misaki Tsuji (also co-author of the study) was stung by a male wasp. “I also tried to get stung and, as I thought the males were harmless, I was surprised when I felt the pain of the sting,” he told AFP.

The professor suspected that the two large spines on either side of the male’s penis were responsible for the sting he felt. And he decided to test this theory in the lab by offering male wasps as a meal to two species of frogs. “We observed several males that, at the time of the attack, stung the mouth or other parts of the frog’s body with their genitalia,” he described.

One video shows a hapless frog trying in vain to chew on the insect, until it snaps it out of its mouth using its front leg.

More than one in three predators “spit out” the male wasps because of the stings they received. The experiment was repeated with wasps from which the genitalia had been removed: the frogs took a bite out of them.

The difference was “statistically significant,” suggesting that this survival strategy in male wasps played some role in the insect’s evolution.

The genital organs of insects, if one excludes their reproductive role, have not been sufficiently studied to date. Earlier research showed that lepidopterans of the sphinx family used their genitalia to emit ultrasounds that drove bats away.

Shinji Sugiura himself has done studies on how certain beetles, after being swallowed by the “enemy”, manage to emerge alive from its anus. The biologist now hopes to continue his research to see if other wasp species have the same defense mechanism.

RES-EMP

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