At just 1.5mm in size, the fig wasp is easily missed. But new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals it is a world champion among insects. The previous longest recorded distance for an insect transporting pollen was roughly 9km. But the fig wasp has smashed that record.
A genetic study of Namibian figs by Sophia Ahmed, Roger Butlin, Stephen Compton and Philip Gilmartin of Leeds University, England, has found that in less than a 48-hour period — call that a lifetime for a fig wasp — the insect can travel well over 160km.
Or rather the female of the species does. Females do all the hard work here, traveling, producing offspring and pollinating figs. The males are around only for mating. But the way the females get from tree to tree over such astonishing distances is no aerodynamic phenomenon of genetic engineering.
“Their wings aren’t that strong and they are not very good fliers,” Compton said. “They get caught up in an air column and get swept along by the wind, which in this part of the Ugab river valley in the Namib Desert can gust up to more than 30kph.”
Given that it’s hard enough to spot a fig wasp, let alone tag it, the research team relied on the distance between trees as a form of measurement. Only 79 trees survive along a 250km stretch of river bed, and a DNA sample of each tree and seeds enabled Ahmed and Butlin to identify which trees had mated with which.
RSS