Researchers in China recently discovered a new wasp species — Deuteragenia ossarium, or the "bone house wasp." The name alone is enough to send shivers down your spine, but it gets worse: the insect hunts tarantulas and litters its nest with dead, uneaten ants.

Maybe the bone house wasp should be called the "house of horrors wasp."

Deuteragenia ossarium is a type of Pompiid wasp, a group that's often called "spider wasps" or "tarantula hawks" for their propensity to pounce upon and immobilize giant spiders with paralyzing and painful venom. According to one entomologist, the debilitating sting feels like "dropping a running hair dryer into your bubble bath."

But adult spider wasps don't eat spiders, they subsist mainly on nectar; instead, they drag the paralyzed spider back to its nest, lay an egg on top of it, and wrap it up like a cocoon. The developing wasp larvae eat the frozen (but still alive) spider as they mature.

But scientists already know this about spider wasps. What surprised the researchers that discovered the bone house wasp in a nature preserve in Jiangxi Province, China, was that their nests were filled with ant corpses.

"The first time I saw it, I thought maybe I wasn't seeing it clearly," said Ecologist Michael Staab, lead author of a new study on the wasp, published this week in PLOS ONE. "But then I found 10 to 15 more nests."

Further research helped explain why the ants were there.

Spider wasps have few predators, their sting being insanely painful, but they do have a petulant invader to deal with, smaller parasitic wasps. Staab and his colleagues found the spider wasps with more dead ants had smaller rates of parasite infestation.

Researchers concluded the bone house wasps have adopted a technique similarly used by other animals called "anting," whereby ants are rubbed on the body to take on their musk. Ants prey on parasites, so the chemical footprint and scent of ants must ward them off.

It all makes the bone house wasp not only terribly frightening, but also rather ingenious.

Plants can hear caterpillars munching and respond with defensive strategies
Columbia, Mo. (UPI) Jul 2, 2013 –

Plants don't have ears in the traditional sense, but they can "hear" — or at least detect and respond to sonic vibrations.

Researchers at the University of Missouri found Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant similar to cabbage and mustard, could recognize the munching sounds of an invading caterpillar. Upon hearing the hungry insect, the plant released additional mustard oils, a compound caterpillars find unappetizing.

"Previous research has investigated how plants respond to acoustic energy, including music," said lead researcher Heidi Appel. "However, our work is the first example of how plants respond to an ecologically relevant vibration."

"We found that feeding vibrations signal changes in the plant cells' metabolism, creating more defensive chemicals that can repel attacks from caterpillars," Appel added.

Previous studies have shown some of the ways plants respond to touch and even wind. But this new study, published in Oecologia, showed the plants were selective in which sounds they paid attention to. Only when caterpillar munching vibrations were recorded and played back for the plants, did they excrete additional mustard oil — not so for recordings of wind and other vibrations.

"This indicates that the plants are able to distinguish feeding vibrations from other common sources of environmental vibration," explained study co-author Rex Cocroft said.

The researchers say better understanding how plants detect and respond to ecological threats could help botanists design plants with improved defense mechanisms.

"Once you understand these things you can mess around with it in plant breeding through conventional methods or biotech approaches to modify plants so they are more responsive in the ways you want to make them more resistant against pests," Appel said. "That's the practical application one day."

Researchers also want to figure out exactly how the plant senses vibrations. That remains a mystery, though Appel and Cocroft guess a protein called mechanoreceptors, which can respond to pressure or distortion, likely plays an important role in the process.

"Finding that out is our next step," said Appel.