Mixture Waterproofs Nests

black and yellow wasps stand on wasp nest near a rocky surface

Biological Strategy

Chinese paper wasp

AskNature Team

Image: Maurice / Flickr / Some rights reserved

Chemically Break Down Organic Compounds

The vast majority of biochemical assembly and breakdown processes–even by the most complex organisms–occur within cells. In fact, cells are able to perform hundreds, even thousands of chemical transformations at the same time under life-friendly conditions (ambient temperature and pressure in an aqueous environment). Part of the reason that decomposition reactions (chemical breakdown) can occur under such mild conditions is because most often, they occur in a stepwise, enzyme-mediated fashion, sipping or releasing small amounts of energy at each step. For example, the breakdown of glucose to pyruvate–and the release of energy–occurs in the 10-step enzyme catalyzed process of glycolysis.

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Protect From Excess Liquids

While water is essential to life, too much water or other liquids can overwhelm living systems. Excess liquids can, for example, decrease a living system’s access to oxygen, promote excessive bacterial or fungal growth, or strip away soil and nutrients. To prevent the accumulation of excess liquids, living systems must control the movement of liquids across their boundaries or surfaces. They do so using waterproofing materials or structures, slowing flow, and/or facilitating flow to move the liquid away. Plant leaves, for example, commonly have waxy surfaces comprised of water-repelling chemicals to keep water from engorging the leaves or facilitating bacterial and fungal growth.

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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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Paper wasps use an oral secretion combined with masticated plant matter to create waterproof paper nests.

Introduction

When it comes to building homes, people have a lot in common with wasps. Both use a variety of materials––wood, stone, straw, grass, leaves, and so on––to construct shelters that will protect them from the elements. And both use some kind of adhesive to hold the materials together. But there are also some key differences. For one, wasps don’t have access to store-bought adhesives like wood glue or duct tape.

The Strategy

Instead, wasps work with what they have. And they have saliva. The sticky, glue-like substance helps them to build water-resistant nests by forming a quick-drying, glue-like matrix. The saliva is primarily with a high proline content. When mixed with the in plant matter a wasp chews, it dries quickly and irreversibly to a water insoluble, water repellant surface. This allows the wasp to build a nest that will stand up to the rigors of weather and the elements.

The Potential

The quick-drying, water-resistant properties of wasp saliva could inspire the creation of more natural adhesives for a variety of applications. Furthermore, the saliva itself, or a similar human-developed substance, could be mixed with plant matter or other materials to create lightweight, highly adaptable building materials for human applications.

Image: Alvesgaspar / Wikimedia commons /

A young female paper wasp (Polistes dominulus).

Image: Janice Carr / CDC, Public Health Image Library (PHIL) /

At a moderately high magnification of 681x this scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted some of the ultrastructural details made visible of the surface of an unidentified wasps nest found on the ground in the Decatur, Georgia suburbs. Note that the nest material takes on the appearance of woven fibers embedded in a glue-like matrix, very similar to the way in which rebar, i.e., iron textured rods, is embedding in concrete to reinforce the building material. Scattered amongst the matrix are small cellulose particulates. Wasp nests are primarily composed of a mixture of masticated wood chips, and the salivary secretions of the female wasps, who chew, and apply the mixture in a nest-building fashion unique to the specie of wasp. The nest is built around a configuration of hexagonal-shaped cells. A single egg is deposited into each cell, which will hatch into a larva, or pupa, that after a varying period of development, will seal itself into the cell, and metamorphose into an adult wasp.

Last Updated October 26, 2016

References

In nest construction, many social wasps use an oral secretion to cement together nest material, e.g. plant fibers, primarily composed of cellulose. Nests are water-resistant (McGovern et al. 1988) due to the saliva-cellulose matrix. The chitin-like saliva is primarily protein with high proline content. When mixed with the cellulose, it dries quickly and irreversibly to a water insoluble, water repellant surface. In general, wasps in rainy environments add more saliva to the mixture (Kudo et al. 1998), because the saliva’s mucoproteins provide adhesive and hydrophobic properties (Wainwright et al. 1976). “P. [Polistes] chinensis, like most other polistine wasps depends for its secretory production on proteinaceous materials.” (Kudo et al. 1998:179)

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