Fibers Reinforce Nests

close up photograph of yellow and black wasp on top of nest

Biological Strategy

Wasps

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Image: Marco Sacchi / Flickr / Some rights reserved

Physically Assemble Structure

Living systems use physical materials to create structures to serve as protection, insulation, and other purposes. These structures can be internal (within or attached to the system itself), such as cell membranes, shells, and fur. They can also be external (detached), such as nests, burrows, cocoons, or webs. Because physical materials are limited and the energy required to gather and create new structures is costly, living systems must use both conservatively. Therefore, they optimize the structures’ size, weight, and density. For example, weaver birds use two types of vegetation to create their nests: strong, a few stiff fibers and numerous thin fibers. Combined, they make a strong, yet flexible, nest. An example of an internal structure is a bird’s bone. The bone is comprised of a mineral matrix assembled to create strong cross-supports and a tubular outer surface filled with air to minimize weight.

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Insects

Class Insecta (“an insect”): Flies, ants, beetles, cockroaches, fleas, dragonflies

Insects are the most abundant arthropods—they make up 90% of the animals in the phylum. They’re found everywhere on earth except the deep ocean, and scientists estimate there are millions of insects not yet described. Most live on land, but many live in freshwater or saltwater marshes for part of their life cycles. Insects have three distinct body sections: a head, which has specialized mouthparts, a thorax, which has jointed legs, and an abdomen. They have well-developed nervous and sensory systems, and are the only invertebrate that can fly, thanks to their lightweight exoskeletons and small size.

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Nests of wasps are sturdy because they incorporate fibers in a parallel pattern.

Introduction

Wasps might not seem (or be) as “friendly” as their cousins the bees, but that aggressive attitude makes them vital members of many ecosystems. They’re important predators, helping to control populations of other insects. Also, while they don’t generally make honey, they do still make honeycomb-like structures to raise their young. And while they don’t make wax to build with, they make amazingly strong paper.

The Strategy

One of the reasons wasps are so successful is their clever use of resources. Wasps chew up wood from the environment, and mix it with their saliva to form the material to build their nests. When building, they manage to incorporate the fibers in a parallel pattern, which makes the paper much stronger than if the fibers were arranged randomly. This allows the nests to be sturdy and lightweight, and produced with simple resources.

The Potential

Humans already build with parallel embedded fibers, for example when using fiberglass or reinforced concrete. There are other aspects of how wasps form their material and construct their nests though that could be applied in innovative ways to human building projects. Combined with additive manufacturing techniques, wasp methods could yield new forms of strong but lightweight material.

Last Updated September 7, 2022

References

“Reinforcement by the planned use of fibers, as in fiberglass or ferroconcrete, is also evident in the thin cardboard pillars of wasps’ nests … In principle, these pillars consist of the same material as the rest of the structure. However, they derive their great strength from the fact that all the wood fibers are arranged in a parallel pattern. That is to say, the wasps instinctively take into consideration the strength requirements of their building materials while building their nests–and they do so with ingenious simplicity.” (Tributsch 1984:10)

Book

How Life Learned to Live: Adaptation in Nature

The MIT Press | 01/01/1983 | Helmut Tributsch

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