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Authors: Olivia Judson
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I do to stop them?
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Give Peace a Chance in Ribeirão Prêto
You canât do anything, Iâm afraid. Your society is one of the most violent on earth. For every crop of figs from your fig tree, millions of young male wasps have died in combat. Thatâs why they all have huge heads, gigantic scything mandibles, and heavily armored shoulders. And thatâs why they all seem deranged: in your species, itâs kill or be killed. Still, you shouldnât fret. Once heâs vanquished his rivals, the winner will mate with you. Why
has such brutality evolved? The answer lies in your unusual lifestyle.
Throughout the sun-drenched tropics, monkeys, birds, rodents, and bats feast on the fruits of the fig tree. The trees are one of natureâs successes: ancient, and abundant, they come in hundreds of different species of every shape and size. Some, such as the banyan tree, spread sideways, dropping thick roots from their branches. Others are tiny shrubs. Still others are parasites that eventually strangle their host plants. But whatever their way of life, fig trees have one feature in common. All of them depend on tiny wasps to pollinate them. Without the wasps, they cannot reproduce. On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, for example, fig trees were introduced without wasps and thus have not been able to multiply.
Although each species of fig has its own private species of wasp, the different systems work in much the same way. The cycle begins when a female arrives at a fig flower, an enclosed urn with several hundred tiny flowers inside. This whole structure will later develop into a fruit. The arriving wasp struggles into the urn, often losing her wings and antennae in the process, and pollinates individual florets within. Depending on the species of wasp, she may pollinate by accident, brushing against the florets as she moves around inside the fig; or she may deliberately smear pollen on the appropriate organs of chosen flowers. After this, she lays her eggs, placing each into an ovary of a floret. Then she dies.
Her children awaken to find themselves inside fig seedsâso they are minute. Each seed is only one or two millimeters long. The young wasps eat their way outâlevying a pollination tax on the fig of one seed per pollinator. This may not sound like much, but it adds up. Some trees lose more than half their seeds to the tax collector. Males emerge first and help the females out of their
seeds. They mate at once, then the males gallantly chew an exit out of the fruit so that the females can escape. Since the males have no wings, they die in the fig they were born in. The females, meanwhile, having collected pollen, fly off to find a new fig to struggle intoâand so on. (Does this mean that humans eat dead wasps every time they eat a fig? Yes and no. Not all cultivated fig varieties require wasps to make fruit. However, some doâand then, yes, eating figs means eating dead wasps. But itâs no big deal. As I said, the wasps are tiny. And theyâre not poisonous. On the contrary, they provide a little extra protein.)
Youâll have noticed Iâve said nothing so far about fighting male wasps. Thatâs because pollinating wasps are generally peaceable types. They are not, however, the only occupants of a fig. As well as having a pollinator species, each fig species has to put up with parasitic waspsâsometimes as many as twenty-five different species. A few are pollinators that have gone bad. They live off the fig, but the pockets they once, long ago, filled with pollen stay empty. Others simply prey on the pollinators. For the most part the biology of these parasites is poorly understood, but we do know that they are often prone to violence.
The difference stems from the way that female parasitic wasps lay their eggs. Rather than crawling into the urn, most of the parasites lay their eggs by drilling through the outside. This means that these females do not have to
Â
Give Peace a Chance in Ribeirão Prêto
You canât do anything, Iâm afraid. Your society is one of the most violent on earth. For every crop of figs from your fig tree, millions of young male wasps have died in combat. Thatâs why they all have huge heads, gigantic scything mandibles, and heavily armored shoulders. And thatâs why they all seem deranged: in your species, itâs kill or be killed. Still, you shouldnât fret. Once heâs vanquished his rivals, the winner will mate with you. Why
has such brutality evolved? The answer lies in your unusual lifestyle.
Throughout the sun-drenched tropics, monkeys, birds, rodents, and bats feast on the fruits of the fig tree. The trees are one of natureâs successes: ancient, and abundant, they come in hundreds of different species of every shape and size. Some, such as the banyan tree, spread sideways, dropping thick roots from their branches. Others are tiny shrubs. Still others are parasites that eventually strangle their host plants. But whatever their way of life, fig trees have one feature in common. All of them depend on tiny wasps to pollinate them. Without the wasps, they cannot reproduce. On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, for example, fig trees were introduced without wasps and thus have not been able to multiply.
Although each species of fig has its own private species of wasp, the different systems work in much the same way. The cycle begins when a female arrives at a fig flower, an enclosed urn with several hundred tiny flowers inside. This whole structure will later develop into a fruit. The arriving wasp struggles into the urn, often losing her wings and antennae in the process, and pollinates individual florets within. Depending on the species of wasp, she may pollinate by accident, brushing against the florets as she moves around inside the fig; or she may deliberately smear pollen on the appropriate organs of chosen flowers. After this, she lays her eggs, placing each into an ovary of a floret. Then she dies.
Her children awaken to find themselves inside fig seedsâso they are minute. Each seed is only one or two millimeters long. The young wasps eat their way outâlevying a pollination tax on the fig of one seed per pollinator. This may not sound like much, but it adds up. Some trees lose more than half their seeds to the tax collector. Males emerge first and help the females out of their
seeds. They mate at once, then the males gallantly chew an exit out of the fruit so that the females can escape. Since the males have no wings, they die in the fig they were born in. The females, meanwhile, having collected pollen, fly off to find a new fig to struggle intoâand so on. (Does this mean that humans eat dead wasps every time they eat a fig? Yes and no. Not all cultivated fig varieties require wasps to make fruit. However, some doâand then, yes, eating figs means eating dead wasps. But itâs no big deal. As I said, the wasps are tiny. And theyâre not poisonous. On the contrary, they provide a little extra protein.)
Youâll have noticed Iâve said nothing so far about fighting male wasps. Thatâs because pollinating wasps are generally peaceable types. They are not, however, the only occupants of a fig. As well as having a pollinator species, each fig species has to put up with parasitic waspsâsometimes as many as twenty-five different species. A few are pollinators that have gone bad. They live off the fig, but the pockets they once, long ago, filled with pollen stay empty. Others simply prey on the pollinators. For the most part the biology of these parasites is poorly understood, but we do know that they are often prone to violence.
The difference stems from the way that female parasitic wasps lay their eggs. Rather than crawling into the urn, most of the parasites lay their eggs by drilling through the outside. This means that these females do not have to
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