34 Quest Vol. 19 No. 2 | 2023 QUESTONLINE.ORG.ZA
Yellow jacket wasps are found in many different parts of the world including Europe, the Mediterranean, and Asia.
In South Africa, yellow jacket wasps are only found in the Western Cape area and have not migrated to other parts of the country.
As small as they are, these insects have quite an interesting body structure (Figure 1). Microscopists at Stellenbosch Figure 1: A yellow jacket wasp as imaged with a stereomicroscope
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(with microscopy)
YELLOW JACKET WASPS,
The yellow jacket wasps, also known as Vespula germanica, have been a pest in our society for many years – building nests in our houses, offices, and sometimes even cars.
You may be wondering what purpose the yellow jackets have except to instill the fear of getting painfully stung. However, they serve a much greater purpose in our ecosystem.
And under the gaze of a stereomicroscope, they reveal many fascinating details.
University used a collection of different microscopes to view this insect and to take a closer look at some of the body parts.
As seen with a scanning electron microscope (Figure 2), they have little hair-like follicles on their body, which are found on the back and abdomen (Figure 1), the wings (Figure 2A) and around the eyes (Figure 2B).
Figure 2: Using a scanning electron microscope, the hair follicles around the eye (B) and on the wing (A), can be viewed at high magnification
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FEATURE | YELLOW JACKETS
QUESTONLINE.ORG.ZA Quest Vol. 19 No. 2 | 2023 35
YELLOW JACKETS | FEATURE
The yellow jacket has flexible wings which allow them to fly at increased speeds (Figure 3A). The wings also have hook- like structures that aid in attaching the two different wings together. This allows the two separate wings to function as Figure 3: Image acquired on the ZEISS stereomicroscope at low magnification (A), a scanning electron microscopy image of the hook-like structures on the wings (B) and an image taken with a confocal microscope showing the autofluorescence of the wasp wing (C)
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C
one as well as helping the wing to endure any aerodynamic forces and stress that may be caused by accidental
collisions during flight.
A rubber-like protein called resilin is responsible for the flexibility of the yellow jacket’s wings. Resilin consists of coiled peptide chains that are cross-linked by the peptides dityrosine and trityrosine which forms an isotropic 3D network that is stable. These peptides allow for resilin to be autofluorescent which is the main method of detecting resilin in arthropods. The fluorescent image (Figure 3C) was imaged on the Carl Zeiss Confocal LSM780 microscope using a laser with a wavelength of 561 nm.
The blue autofluorescence represents the resilin on the surface of the wings (Figure 4) while the green autofluorescence shows the non- or weakly-sclerotised chitinous material and the red autofluorescence shows the strongly chitinous material. Due to the confocal microscope being unable to detect the autofluorescence at a UV level, the blue autofluorescence is not brightly seen in this example.
All these characteristics of the wasp wing allows for the functioning of the wings to help the wasps fight against any aerodynamic forces and withstand any damage that can be made to the wing since it is the main mode of transportation for the yellow jacket wasp. The wing structure is important to the wasp as it helps the yellow jackets to escape predators, for communication and sound protection, which are all necessary in the daily life of a yellow jacket.
Article written by Kerishnee Naicker, a flow cytometry and flourescence microscopy intern at CAF-Stellenbosch University, also affiliated with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
Figure 4: Image to show the low levels of blue
autofluorescence on the wing that shows where resilin is situated on the wing
O ka ba o ipotšiša gore di-wasp tše disehla tša baki di na le morero ofe, ka ntle le go bjala poifo ya go hlabja ka tsela e bohloko. Lega go le bjalo, di phetha morero o mogolo kudu tshepedišong ya rena ya tswalano ya diphedi le tikologo ya tšona. Le gona ka tlase ga go lebelela ga stereomicroscope, di utolla dintlha tše dintši tše di kgahlišago.
Translated into Northern Sotho by Dr Walter Matli.
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
ASSAf Research Repository http://research.assaf.org.za/
A. Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Publications D. Quest: Science for South Africa
