If the female wasp crawls into the caprifig, she can successfully lay her eggs and die. The males hatch first, mate with the females, dig tunnels out of the caprifig, and die. The females, now covered in fig pollen from the caprifig, fly out to begin the cycle again. If the female wasp crawls into a female fig, she will not be able to successfully lay her eggs despite pollinating the fig with pollen from the caprifig she hatched in. The fig will absorb her body and her eggs as the fruit develops.
Comment on Bees
UprisingVoltage@feddit.it 4 weeks ago
Wait, wasps are pollinators too?
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Looks like their entire life is fucking and then dying immediately after. Aight, they can have a pass. Mainly because I’ll never see one in my life.
InternetPerson@lemmings.world 4 weeks ago
There are a lot of different species which serve as pollinators besides bees. Afaik, some are more specialised into specific flowers/plants than others and without them, these plants wouldn’t be able to reproduce. (Yucca moths for example.)
angrystego@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yes, they are! They’re into sweet nectar - that’s why they also tend to visit our sweet drinks. The adults also sometimes search for bits of meat for the carnivorous larvae. In this mode they act like insect pest control.
RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Yeah. They usually pollinate my sweet toast in spring and my ham in late summer.
PolarisFx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Wasp nest in wall, specialist comes out, sucks them all out, sprays commercial insecticide into wall cavity. Wasps that were out of nest at the time come back and get confused and piss off, couple days later they’re back and have found new unbefore seen holes to fly into, specialist tells me to buy trap and fill with meat. Buy canned ham and dump in trap. All wasps that came back are now in trap. Thanks Ham.