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Early in his career, entomologist Justin Schmidt and his wife decided to study in detail the effects of harvester ant venom. The couple went on a trip around the United States with the goal of collecting as many representatives of various types of stinging reaper ants as possible. At that time, the effect of their poison was unexplored. Naturally, there were bites.
To explore chemical composition and the effect of insect venom, the Schmidts were forced to analyze a huge number of them, respectively, they were regularly stinged by poisonous ants. Debbie Schmidt described her first bite as "a burning, throbbing, tearing pain."
After collecting tens of thousands of insects from all over the United States, the couple planned to conduct a detailed study and analysis of the behavior and bites of reaper ants. To describe the strength of ant venom, it was necessary to evaluate its toxicity and bite force, that is, the feeling of pain that a person experiences both during and as a result of the poison entering the body.
Evaluation of toxicity was not difficult, because its measurements and characteristics already existed and were actively used in the scientific community. However, pain measurement scales, especially for poisonous insect bites, did not exist at that time.
Schmidt scale
This led Justin to create his own venomous insect pain scale, also known as the Schmidt Sting Force Scale. There are four points on it, and it is based on the sting of an ordinary bee, which is familiar to almost everyone. A bee sting is worth two points. To score a point lower or higher, the bite must be significantly different in pain. If it is not sufficiently different, then it is assigned a half value.
Over many years of research, the entomologist has added many more species of insects to his list, not only ants, but also bees, wasps and others. Of course, Schmidt never really wanted to experience the bites and venom of these insects, but in the course of his research he received more than a thousand bites from 83 species of stinging insects. It is not surprising that the words of such an expert are listened to not only ordinary people but also fellow entomologists.
Known scientifically as Solenopsis invicta, this ant species is distributed throughout South and Central America, the southern United States, Australia, Oceania, China and the Caribbean. The bite of these ants is estimated on a pain scale of one point.
Sand wasp, or cicada killer
The scientific name of this bright and rare insect is Sphecius grandis, its habitat is limited to the southwestern United States and Central America. Sand wasps prefer to live in uplands and live near cicadas. An insect bite is worth one and a half points.
honey bee
The well-known insect, famous for its diligence, love of order, usefulness and, of course, last but not least, its poisonous sting, Apis mellifera lives on all continents except Antarctica. According to the Schmidt pain scale, the sting of an ordinary bee is estimated at two points.
Velvet ant, or German wasp
These furry insects are famous for their beauty and danger. Their velvet coat is usually bright color- red, yellow or blue. She warns of the danger, because the bites of Mutillidae species are very painful, it is not for nothing that German wasps are called “cow killers”. The bite is similar to a burning oil burn, the pain from it is estimated at three points and lasts a very long time.
Very common in the eastern United States, Pogonomyrmex badius is an invasive species of poisonous ant. They are divided into castes, such as worker ants (smaller) and soldiers (large). Their bite is worth three points.
Wasps of the genus Pepsis, also known as road wasps, are distributed on all continents. They have extremely strong poison, and the pain characteristic of their bite on the Schmidt scale reaches a maximum of four points.
bullet ant
Ants of the genus Paraponera clavata are distributed in Central and South America and are famous for their strong poison. The pain from the bite of one ant is felt during the day and is not weakened. Not surprisingly, on the scale of pain, the bite of a bullet ant is characterized by a maximum of four points.
Armored Wasp
The bite of Synoeca septentrionalis is described by Schmidt as torture and incessant agony. These wasps are common in the South and Central America, and the pain from their venom is rated at four points.
At the word "wasp" many people imagine black-and-yellow flying insects with a dangerous sting, which irresistibly strive for everything sweet and greatly poison our lives at the end of summer. However, the variety of wasps is great - thousands of species, and many of them are known only to specialists.
The variety of German wasps is great. According to various sources, there are from 4 to 8 thousand species in the world fauna. All of them gravitate to areas with a hot dry climate. In the Palearctic (in the north of Europe, Asia and Africa), only 500 species are found. Dimensions different types vary greatly - from 5 to 30 mm.
SONGS OF VELVET ANTS
Sexual dimorphism (differences between males and females) in German women is very large, it is even easy to mistake representatives of different sexes for different species. They are distinguished not only by the presence or absence of wings, but also by the structure of the body and size. German female males are larger, usually black or brown, often with rusty-red spots on the chest. They have longer antennas - 13 segments, and not 12, like in females. Females are brighter: the chest is reddish, and on the abdomen there is a pattern of black and white hairs, with contrasting light spots. Having lost their wings, the females acquired the ability to make sounds so that their cavaliers capable of flight could find the lady of the heart in the labyrinths of someone else's nest (although, according to other sources, mating occurs outside the nest). The sound is extracted with the help of stridulation - the friction of special structures against one another (as, for example, in locusts and some spiders). The unpaired stridulatory organ is located on the upper surface of the abdomen, between the second and third segments.
Wingless females resemble ants, for which the Germans also received the name "velvet ants" (translated from the English name velvet ants). The resemblance to ants is not surprising, since all bees, ants, and modern wasps descended from some common wasp-like ancestor. However, a specialist will immediately notice a difference in the structure of the antennae: in ants, the so-called cranked antennae fold movably in the middle at an acute angle, while in German women they are almost straight, although with a slight bend.
FLOWERS OR CORDS
Males emerge from pupae first and circle above the ground in search of mates. They feed on nectar on flowers and lick various sugary secretions on plants. Females are also found on plants, but much less frequently. The internal resources stored at the larval stage are enough for an adult German woman for two weeks. Females are reported to suck out insect carcasses and ingest the liquid component of food from nectar and pollen stored by host bees.
A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF
Class: insects.
Order: Hymenoptera.
Family: German.
Latin name: Mutillidae.
Size: from 5 to 30 mm.
Coloration: males are brown or black with rusty-red spots on the chest, females with a reddish chest and a black and white pattern on the abdomen.
Seeing this insect in the forest, you can hardly guess which family it belongs to. The easiest way to attribute this insect to ants, to huge black and white three centimeter ants. But it's not really an ant, it's a wasp.
Despite the fact that the insect has no wings, and its entire body is covered with long fluffy hair, this is a real wasp. She belongs to the family os-german, which are also known as velvet ants which is not at all strange.
According to various estimates, there are from 4300 to 8000 species of wingless wasps. But despite such diversity, all of them are extremely poorly studied. According to the researchers, German wasps lead a rather secretive lifestyle, it is difficult to find them in forests and steppes and even more difficult to observe them for a long time. It is very easy to find confirmation of these words - on the territory of countries former USSR There are 64 species of velvet ants, but hardly anyone has seen at least one of them live.
Representatives of different species vary greatly in size, appearance and even body structure. Characteristic for all is only an external resemblance to ants and a woolen cover. Males differ even more from females of the same species; sexual demorphism in German wasps is very pronounced. Males are somewhat larger than females, sometimes the superiority is very significant. Females do not have wings and eyes at all, some species of males have wings, but they are poorly adapted for flying. The coloration of males is usually dominated by dark tones - black, dark gray, less often brown; females are brighter and bright hues, the abdomen is often decorated with unusual patterns of bright colors. It is possible to describe the features of sexual demorphism further almost indefinitely, we will only say that the differences are so significant that for a long time males and females of the same species were classified as completely different.
Apparently, as compensation for the lack of wings, nature endowed the multilid with a large sharp sting and outstanding fighting abilities. Ordinary bees and wasps are not their rivals. The bite of a German woman is also extremely painful for a person - pain can last from several hours to several days, and the tumor will remain for at least a week.
The German Wasp is a good example of the phrase "looks can be deceiving". It looks like a soft, fluffy and harmless insect, but in fact a cruel and merciless killer.
