ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2012) — European paper wasps (Polistes dominula) advertise the size of their poison glands to potential predators, finds a new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology. The brighter the colour, the larger the poison gland.
Aposematism is used by many different animals to warn potential predators that they are poisonous. Usually this takes the form of distinctive colouration or patterns which predators quickly learn to avoid. Paper wasps have conspicuous yellow and black patterns covering their bodies and researchers from University of Granada and the University of Almería found that when they compared the size of a wasp's poison gland to the brightness of its colour there was a direct relationship.
Dr Gregorio Moreno-Rueda, who led this study explained, "It might be thought that bigger wasps have bigger poison glands, and this is indeed true, but even when the data was adjusted to take in to account the size of the insect, a positive correlation between gland size and brightness remained."
Read on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819211204.htm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!