By Sara LaJeunesse
University of Georgia
Wasp wrangling may sound like risky business, especially for children. Actually, it's quite safe. So much so that a University of Georgia professor is using wasps as a way to teach science.
Collaborating with UGA science education colleagues and about 100 Georgia middle school science teachers, UGA entomologist Bob Matthews has developed 20 classroom activities using "WOWBugs," wasps so tiny that their stingers can't penetrate human skin.
"The first lesson is handling the organism," Matthews said.
Bug-racing 101
Students practice sweeping the bugs across their desks with paint brushes. In a second lesson, called WOWBug Racetrack, they learn how to collect and analyze data. They record the time it takes for the flightless wasps to scuttle from one end of the track to the other.
Matthews and his colleagues have studied these wasps' biology for more than 30 years. He first recognized their potential as teaching tools when he was in graduate school.
"They literally found me," he said of the discovery that WOWBugs had infested his thesis experiment involving a bee.
From this fiasco, Matthews learned of the wasps' hardiness and short (24-day) life cycle, which makes them convenient to study. He named thm WOWBugs because of the enthusiasm they generated.
Ant-size non-stinging wasps
"They were originally called fast wasps in allusion to their rapid life cycle," he said. "Unfortunately, the name didn't have good marketing appeal, as it conjured up a quick sting!"
Not much bigger than fleas, the parasitic wasps (Melittobia digitata) prey on many solitary bees and wasps, including mud daubers -- large, black wasps that make mud nests.
The tiny bugs have some fascinating characteristics. The male, for example "is most un-insect looking," Matthews said. "He's blind, his antler-like antennae are grotesquely modified and he's got little stumps for wings."
This compromised chap's pheromones let him do his procreative duty, however, as long as he can steer clear of other males who will try to kill him.
In any case, teachers are enthusiastic about using WOWBugs. Brenda Hunt of North Habersham Middle School in Clarkesville, Ga., teaches her students how to collect wild specimens by scraping mud dauber nests off the sides of buildings.
"I also tell them," she said, "not to use their mothers' spatulas without permission."
For college students, too
WOWBug use at the college level is a bit more involved. Matthews and postdoctoral associate Jorge M. Gonzalez created four modules for freshman biology classes. These modules help students study:
* Courtship and aggression behaviors.
* Natural selection and heritability.
* Ecological interactions, including competition.
* Development and polymorphism (having more than one form -- short-winged versus long-winged, in the case of females).
One of Matthews' animal behavior classes was taught through the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The students designed WOWBug experiments for their end-of-term projects.
Vanessa Reynolds, a recent UGA graduate, examined whether female wasps would choose to lay eggs on a host that had already been parasitized or go for a "clean" host instead. Although her study yielded inconclusive results, Reynolds was impressed with the class.
"It influenced my goals," she said. "Now I'd love to go to graduate school in animal behavior and incorporate that subject into a focus in education."
Stories like this make Matthews proud. And Reynolds is only one among the many students of all ages who have been wowed by this bug.
"Fifteen years ago, if you had said WOWBugs were going to go national or international in the next decade or so, I would have said you're crazy," Matthews said. "But it's becoming another model organism for classroom use at all levels."
For more information, visit the Web site www.wowbugs.com or email Matthews at rmatthew@uga.edu.
