What a fun evening at the Museums and Heritage Awards ceremony, with @grantmuseumucl ‘s Tannis Davidson, Hannah Cornish and George Stella Paris; and @datascaper ’s John Wang and Lourenco Viveiros! Our World of Wasps exhibition had been shortlisted for a Best in Digital award - a VR experience of being a wasp inside a wasp nest, and a wasp flying thru a rewilding Grant Museum. An evening of great company, fancy outfits, glitz, fine food and wine, and a remarkable collection of talented people from museums all over the Uk. Honoured to have been there. Congrats to all the winners and shortlisted! @ucllifesciences@ucl #WaspLove
New paper out on plasticity of castes in primitively social paper wasps.
Unlike ‘superorganismal’ social insects, castes in paper wasps are flexible. This means adults can switch caste as options around them change.
A favourite experiment for paper wasp researchers is to remove the queen and see which worker succeeds her: workers can mate, develop their ovaries and lay eggs - ie become a queen.
But studies on how plastic a female is once she BECOMES a queen are rare.
Here we forced queens and workers of the neotropical paper wasp, Polistes canadensis, to perform the behaviours of their counterpart by removing all nestmates.
Both ex-queens and ex-workers exhibited high plasticity: all wasps laid eggs and foraged. However, brood reared by queens had significantly lower survivorship than those reared by ex-workers, suggesting limits to plasticity for queens. We also analysed their brain transcriptomes and found suites of genes putatively critical for worker behaviour, that ex-queens failed to upregulate.
This suggests mechanistic limits to plasticity for individuals once they become a committed queen. This makes sense as workers invest in raising relatives (indirect fitness) but leave options open to become queen (direct fitness) if the opportunity arises. Once a queen, however, it makes sense to specialise as an egg layer, maximising direct fitness: queens rarely leave the nest and are long lived.
On David Attenborough’s 100th birthday, it’s also worth mentioning that these Panamanian paper wasps starred in his insect series, ‘Life in the Undergrowth’ in 2005! #WaspStars
Shout out to Co-waspers Emily Bell, Daisy Taylor, Chris Wyatt, Andy Radford. @ucllifesciences@universityofbristol
Bell et al. (2026) ‘Limits to behavioural plasticity in tropical paper wasps’ Proc B. 10.1098/rspb.2026.0252
Clear blue skies, birdsong, first flowers and buds are some of the first delights of spring. But take a moment to notice the signs of spring that tend to go overlooked - like the emergence social wasp queens from hibernation. As luck would have it, this Vespula germanica Queen decided to break her long winter’s sleep on the front wall of my house. Isn’t she beautiful? She has a tricky time ahead - she’s lost 40% of her body fat, and needs to find some sugar quickly to start getting herself ready to be a mum. Once she’s started to develop her ovaries, she’ll build a little paper nest. If successful, that nucleus nest will grow into an army of 1000s of mini pest controllers and pollinators. So if you see a Queen wasp, don’t panic or swat her - give her some sugar water, and leave her be. Your garden with thank you for it. #wasplove #nature #natureliteracy
I rarely turn down the chance to talk about the importance of wasps to an audience. But as i took to the stage at #pestex2026 at the ExCel centre in London to talk about why we all need to be ‘wasp-positive’ - and looked out at the crowd of my pest controller audience - I wondered if this might be the toughest audience I’d faced yet..
I was wrong! What a fantastic crowd! And I realised that never before had I had the chance to speak to a crowd where every one of them had been as up close and personal with wasps as I have. Of course, we have our differences - but there was considerable appetite in the room for wasp positivity. A lot of interest in relocating nests rather than killing them; many accounts of how pest controllers explain to customers why they don’t need a wasp nest removed; much excitement about collaborating with scientists to learn more about wasps.
Off to #excellondon to talk to #pestcontrollers at #PestEx2026 about how and why this community can shift people’s perceptions of wasps.
RELOCATE wasp nests rather than kill them.
COMMUNICATE with customers about why wasps matter.
COLLABORATE with scientists (like us!) to help us learn more about these stigmatised insects.
Yellowjacket wasps - the ones that bother you at picnics - are social insects. They live in colonies of 100s-1000s of individuals- mostly sterile workers. At the end of the summer, all the workers die… the males die too, after a glorious mating flight. All that survives the colony are the newly mated queens. They disperse from the nest and find somewhere to hibernate the long winter away. These are the last few weeks of sleep; as spring warms the air, the young queens will wake up. That’s what makes it so special to stumble upon a sleeping queen in March. She’s still fast asleep, wing tucked under her abdomen, snuggled safely in the curl of a dead leaf. Sleep well, my Queen. Wake when you’re ready and make a beautiful nest - in my garden if you like, far away if you prefer. You’ll give life to an army of pest-controllers, pollinators and decomposers. Some people might not appreciate the work you do… but keep calm and carry on. One day they will. #WaspLove #Vespula
#nature
Rare outing to something amazing with @bechstein35632 #Raye is a phenomenal performer - innovative music, incredible voice, captivating and provocative show maker. Spur of the moment ticket booking many months ago was DEFINITELY worth it!
Founded in 1826, this month marks the 200 year birthday of University College London! And what a great show UCL has put on to celebrate this landmark! First university in London; first to admit people of any (or no) faith; first (eventually) to admit and award degrees to women; inclusive to the core. I am proud to be a two-time alumnus of UCL and humbled to now to work here as a professor. UCL - you’re a very special place. Here’s to the next 200 years!
Wasp at your picnic?
Don’t flap and shout: sit still and watch.
What’s does she want? Is it something protein-based (eg Ham, chicken, sausage)? Or is it sugary (eg jam, ice cream, sweet drink)? Sharing your picnic wasp observations with us can help us learn more about wasp food preferences and how they change through the colony cycle. Read more here and submit your data: /news/2025/aug/ham-or-jam-help-scientists-recording-wasp-food-preferences #HamOrJam #PicnicWaspSurvey @ucllifesciences
