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Species of wasps capable of surviving under water for up to a week | The bees
Bumblebees may be at home in the city and the countryside, but now researchers have found at least one species that is even more adaptable: it can survive underwater.
Scientists have found that queens of the eastern common wasp, a species widespread in eastern North America, can withstand submersion for up to a week while hibernating.
With wasp queens known to burrow into the ground to hibernate, researchers say the phenomenon could help them survive floods in nature.
The team said its next priority was to explore whether the results hold for other wasp species.
We know that about a third of all bee species are currently in decline [but] it is not the case with [the common eastern bumblebee]said Dr Sabrina Rondeau of the University of Guelph in Canada, adding that the team was keen to learn whether flood tolerance might play a role in their resilience.
Rondeau and her co-author, Prof Nigel Raine, first made their discovery when a mishap in the laboratory led to water being introduced into containers in which hibernating queen bees were kept.
After that, of course, curiosity led the way to conducting a full-scale experiment with many replications, Rondeau said.
Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the scientists describe how they took 143 unmated, hibernating queens of the eastern common wasp and placed each in its own plastic tube containing moist soil. The tubes were then fitted with perforated caps and kept in a dark refrigerated unit for one week.
After checking that the bees were still alive, the researchers kept 17 tubes as controls and added cold water to the remaining 126. While the queen was allowed to float above water in half of these tubes, she was pushed underwater from one sink to the other.
For both conditions, one-third of the tubes were each washed for eight hours, one-third for 24 hours, and one-third for seven days, simulating different flooding conditions. The team then transferred the bees to new tubes and monitored their survival.
The results revealed that survival rates were similar regardless of the length of time and conditions the queens were subjected to. In fact, 88% of the controls and 81% of the queens that had been submerged for a week were still alive at eight weeks. However, higher weight queens had a better chance of survival.
The researchers say the findings are unusual given that most insects overwinter as adults, including many ground beetles, cannot withstand submersion and must leave floodplains to survive.
While Rondeau said it's likely that queens of other wasp species were also tolerant to flooding, ground-nesting bees, which include some wasp species, may still be affected by flooding as their larvae may not survive.
Among future areas of research, the team said it would be interesting to explore the mechanisms that support the queens' resilience to flooding with their low oxygen requirements during hibernation among possible important factors.
Prof Dave Goulson, a bee expert from the University of Sussex who was not involved in the work, said bee enthusiasts had long speculated that increased winter rain amid the climate crisis could drown out many queen bees. as they hibernate underground.
Amazingly, this new study shows that hibernating queen bees are completely unaffected by being held under water for up to a week, he said. This seems to be a small aspect of climate change that we don't have to worry about.
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Sources 2/ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/17/bumblebee-species-common-eastern-survive-underwater-hibernating The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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