All those who love wasps raise your hand!!
Anyone?
No doubt there is someone somewhere who thinks wasps are the bee’s knees, but generally wasps seem to have a bad reputation and are in fact not well-liked by many. Have they come to ruin your picnic, or have you accidentally walked into a nest? And speaking of nests, check out the massive nest that was discovered (pictured above) while undertaking works to prepare the Murray River islands for restoration for our ‘Roosting Refuges’ project which is gratefully funded by the Australian Government’s Natural Heritage Trust under the Urban Rivers and Catchments Program.
While it’s true some wasps clash with people, the majority aren’t even noticed yet they play such important roles in our ecosystems. So before you run for the bug spray, let’s take a closer look at how valuable our wasps are!
When we talk about ecosystem services, we mean the kinds of things that animals do to help that ecosystem flourish. One such service is pollination, which everybody knows is essential to both native and crop species. And what animal do people think of when they hear the word pollination? It’s probably bees! While the introduced European honeybee (Apis mellifera) is well-known for pollinating crops and producing honey, Australia has around 1700 species of native bees, all of which are pollinators! From tiny, stingless bees that live in colonies (the genera Tetragonula and Austroplebeia), to solitary, buzz-pollinating bees such as the blue banded bees (Amegilla spp.). And here’s a bee that’s regularly seen in our local reserves and is an important pollinator of native flowers – a Lasioglossum species which likes to shelter inside murrnong flowers on cool spring mornings.
Now 1700 may sound like a lot of different species of bees, but can you guess how many species of wasps we have in Australia? It’s around 12,000! And while you might not think of wasps as pollinators, many do feed on pollen and nectar as adults and hence play a role in pollination as they travel from flower to flower.
But that’s not all wasps do! They also provide other ecosystem services including decomposition by feeding on dead insects, and while not observed in Australia, some hornets actively play a role in seed dispersal. However, wasps in Australia certainly do provide another and crucial service, which is the control of insect and spider populations. Some wasps lay their eggs on or in the bodies of insects or spiders while others catch and paralyse them then stuff them into nests with their eggs. A nutritious first food for wasp larvae!
Check out some examples of local wasps:
1. The orange-collared spider wasp (Ferreola handschini) catches and paralyses spiders before laying eggs on the spider’s body.
2. This ichneumonid wasp parasitises moth and butterfly larvae.
3. Grass-carrying wasps (Isodontia spp.) lay an egg in a crevice and then place paralysed prey such as a grasshopper inside before sealing it with cut grass stems.
Apart from being super helpful, Australia’s wasps come in all manner of colours and weird-looking shapes, and you can read about some of them in this article by Australian Geographic.
Now back to pollination and some other animals that have pollen and nectar on their menus. There are of course many other insects that pollinate, and some local examples are pictured below, but did you know that birds are also important pollinators, especially of species that flower in the cooler months when insects might not be so active? Species like honeyeaters, lorikeets, silvereyes, woodswallows, pardalotes, and thornbills visit flowers to feed. And don’t forget mammals like the eastern pygmy possum (Cercartetus nanus) and grey-headed flying foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus) of which we have a large local colony. Flying foxes especially play a vital role in the ecosystem, moving between fragmented habitats and dispersing both pollen and seeds of over 100 species of trees!
If you’d like to give our native pollinators a hand, you can plant native species to attract them to your garden and cut down on the use of pesticides. And if you’re really keen to learn more about insect pollinators, you can join the Australian Pollinator Count which takes place between 8-16 November. All the information you need (as well as handy guides to help you with identification) can be found at the link.
