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Animal Behavior
Taking a bite out of a fellow colony worker helps wasps recruit new foragers
April 21st, 2006
According to research by a University of Washington animal behaviorist, biting is a way that workers in a colony of the social wasp Polybia occidentalis recruit new foragers to gather water, food and building material in a time of need, said Sean O'Donnell, a UW associate professor of psychology. O'Donnell previously found that biting appears to be an important way of regulating the division of labor among these insects. Now, in a recent issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, he describes an experiment in which he artificially removed active foragers from four wasp colonies to see how new foragers are recruited. He found that biting was...
Source: Science Letter (2006-04-21)
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