Invertebrates:bees, wasps, centipedes and moths

Welcome back to evolution of venom, Today’s blog topic, we will be covering bees, wasps, centipedes and moths and how they use their venom. A brief recap: we covered cone snails, jellyfish, and sea urchins and how they use their venom.

Bees are flying insects that belong to the order Hymenoptera, superfamily Apoidea that produces honey and beeswax, they are known for their role in pollination and live mostly in large colonies (Danforth et al, 2006). Bee venom comes from the poison gland that contains a variety of toxins and chemicals, bee stings are dangerous to both humans and bees as the stinger that introduces the venom into the human’s system is torn from the abdomen causing the death of the bee. Some humans can have a severe reaction to bee venom causing shock and death (Warrell, 2015). Below is a diagram of a honey bee. 

Diagram of honeybee by exploringnature

 

Wasps are another flying insect that belongs to the order Hymenoptera, but belongs to the family Vespoidea. A majority of wasps are carnivores, feeding on grubs, spiders, and other insects. Many species of wasps live in solitary but they can live in social colonies with a queen, workers and drones with the worker wasps been sterile. Unlike bees who died after losing their stinger, wasps can use their stinger repeatedly (Wasps, 2017). Below is a diagram of a sterile worker wasp.

By WikipedianProlific at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.

 

Centipedes are arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda, Phylum Arthropoda. Their body is made up of a flattened head with a trunk composed of segments (somites). The head has long antennas, jaws and two pairs of maxillae used for food handling. The appendages on the trunks first segment has claws that have been modified to allow poison glands to deliver venom to stun or kill prey (Centipedes, 2017). Below is a diagram of a centipede.

 

Diagram of a centipede by enchantedlearning.

 

Moths belong to the order Lepidoptera (same as butterflies), although most moths are not venomous, two families (Megalopygidae and Saturniidae) have had human deaths by these moths. The Lonomia obliqua (Giant silkworm moth) larval form has spines with venom that when broken, the venom enters the bloodstream causing mild nausea, burning pain and headache, then progresses to haematuria, bleeding from scars, and severe haemorrhagic syndrome (Spadacci-Morena, 2006). Below is a diagram of a Lonomia obliqua larval.

By Centro de Informações Toxicológicas de Santa Catarina

 

In next weeks’ blog, we be covering vertebrates that use venom. Below are the articles used in this week’s blog for more reading about these animals.

 

References 

Centipede. (2017). In P. Lagasse, & Columbia University, The Columbia encyclopedia (7th ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Danforth, B.N., Sipes, S., Fang, J. & Brady, S.G. 2006, "The History of Early Bee Diversification Based on Five Genes Plus Morphology", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 103, no. 41, pp. 15118-15123.

Spadacci-Morena, D.D., Soares, M.A.M., Moraes, R.H.P., Sano-Martins, I.S. & Sciani, J.M. 2016, "The urticating apparatus in the caterpillar of Lonomia obliqua (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae)", Toxicon : official journal of the International Society on Toxinology, vol. 119, pp. 218-224.

Warrell, D.A. 2015;2016;, "Venomous animals", Medicine, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 120-124

Wasp. (2017). In P. Lagasse & Columbia University, The Columbia encyclopedia. (7th ed.).

Picture references

https://www.exploringnature.org/db/view/Honeybee

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Wasp_morphology.png

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/invertebrates/arthropod/Centipede.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonomia_obliqua#/media/File:Lonomia-obliqua-citsc-1.jpg