Vespa Wasps

Figure 7 Venomous hymenoptera insects, (a) Common honeybee (Apis me/Z/fera) (b), eastern yellowjacket Vespula maculifrons)-, (c) European hornet (Vespa crabro), (d) bull ant (Myrmecia esuriens)-, (e) Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica,)] (f) wasp stinger. Photos from (a) to (f) by Autan (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), E. Begin (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), N. Jones (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), Nuytsia (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), Netman (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License), and M. Halldin (GNU free documentation license), respectively.

The venoms of many kinds of bees, wasps, and hornets (the genera Vespa, Polistes, Vespula, Ropalidia, etc.) contain biogenic amines such as histamine (136), serotonin (141), and catecholamines in addition to polyamines such as putrescine (111), spermidine (110), and spermine (112) (Table VIII). The biogenic amines in the venoms act as the main pain-producing principles 46). The contents of these amines in the venom may affect the severity of pain production, edematous reaction of the skin, or increase in skin permeability by stings of these insects. Consequently these amines act as toxins for their defense, together with acetylcholine, enzymes, and peptides 47). 

Purines such as xanthine (91), hypoxanthine (92), guanine (93), and uric acid (95) are found in excreta of many insects (Table VI) 48). Uric acid (95) is known to be the main end product of nitrogen metabolism in almost all insects. Various purines are found in the wasp Vespa) and the sawfly Gilpinia) in common with other insects (Table VI). In addition, various pteridines occur in Vespa and in the honeybee (Table VI). The latter also contains xanthurenic acid (52) or kynurenic acid (53), xanthurenic acid 4,8-digiucoside (56), and a yellow pigment, xanthommatin (58), as tryptophan metabolites (Table V). 

Removal of the auxiliary group from 12 (see p413) to give 13 followed by several steps yields (-)-(65)-tetrahydro-6-undecyl-2//-pyran-2-one (14), a pheromone of the wasp Vespa orientalis. Comparison of the optical rotation of the synthetic product with that of the natural product served to confirm the stereochemistry of the initial reduction to 12. 

Butts, D. R, Espelie, K.E. and Hermann, H.R. (1991). Cuticular hydrocarbons of four species of social wasps in the subfamily vespinae Vespa crabro (L.), Dolichovespula maculata (L.), Vespula squamosa (Drury), and Vespula maculifrons (Buysson). Comp. Biochem. Physiol. B, 99, 87-91. 

Mandaratoxln. A wasp venom from Vespa manda-rina structurally related to mastoparan. 

Mastoparans. M. 1 C7oH 3,N 0,5, Mr 1478.93, colorless powder, a peptide from the wasp venom of Ves-pula lewisii M. X C73H,26N2oO,5S, Mr 1556.0 from Vespa xanthoptera with the structural formulae ... 

Social thermogenesis is common for many wasps and often studied by thermometry. But no information about the nest metabolism - obtained by direct or mdirect calorimetry - is presented in the literature. Nevertheless, such data would be interesting for energy balances of a complete nest during the season and the contributions from the different castes of the wasps, the environmental temperature, the size of the nest and the insulating properties of the envelope. To find an answer to such questions, experiments similar to those with bumblebee nests were performed on the hornet Vespa crabro. 

Recently experiments were performed on nests of the hornet Vespa crabro and of several wasps by means of combustion calorimetry and DSC, TG/DTG and MS. The ash content of most nests is small (about 3 %) comparable to that of wood (see above) with the exception of nests of the wasp Dolichovespula (7 4 %). In contrast to wood with more than 50 % (fresh) and about 20 % (dry) the water content of wasp nests is extremely low with only 3.6 %. This is of special importance for the insulating properties of the envelope. The combustion energy with values between -16 and -18 MJ/kg corresponds to that of wood [120]. 

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