Last month we wrote about the interesting and unknown fluorescence of scorpions. As we said, these arachnids are not the only ones capable of shining under ultraviolet (UV) light , as animals such as the Cape jumping hare, the platypus, flying squirrels, some possums and wombats, also do it.
To this list of brilliant animals are added numerous species of the genus Polistes sp . They are Asian paper wasps, insects with diurnal habits. The most curious thing is that they are not the ones that shine, but their nests. This fact was discovered and published this past August 2021 in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface by scientists from the Sorbonne University (Paris).
During a nocturnal expedition in Vietnam in search of fluorescent insects, chemist Bernd Schöllhorn and his team came across these luminous nests. “When you see it, it’s just magical,” says the researcher for Science News . “It seemed that someone had lit a lantern in the forest, but there was no one. […] Personally, I felt very optimistic to find these organisms so interesting, because the aspect of fluorescence is still little explored, “he continues. After finding them, some specimens were taken to his laboratory for analysis.
After research, the scientists found that the silk threads that make up the nests even glow more brightly than other documented fluorescent biomaterials. “We have not seen any other example like that,” says Schöllhorn.
But of what use is the fluorescence of the nests to the wasps? As usual there are several hypotheses in this regard, but not a consensus. One of them is reflected in the published article and proposes that in this way, the walls of the nests protect the larvae inside from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation , since they absorb part of the harmful energy and dissipate it as visible light. An alternative hypothesis would be to help the wasps find their home; when the sun casts its last direct ultraviolet light at the end of the day, the nests could shine bright enough amid the darkened foliage and indicate their position to the wasps, as if they were beacons in the twilight.
However, there are always those who think that “it is possible that this is just an incidental by-product of how nest silk is made, ” entomologist Liz Tibbetts tells The Atlantic , who was not involved in the study.
Be that as it may, this study shows that we are finding more and more examples that the ability to shine under ultraviolet light is more widespread in nature than we thought, and it brings us closer to discovering the biological function of this incredible phenomenon. Will we humans be able to use bioluminescence to our advantage in the near future?
References: Daney De Marcillac, W., Nguyen, LTP, Aracheloff, C., Berthier, S., & Schöllhorn, B. (2021). Bright green fluorescence of Asian paper wasp nests. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 18 (181), 20210418. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0418
