Milling Inserts - milling inserts

One of the main goals in the life of a female insect is to find the best place to lay her eggs. For one particular fig wasp (Apocryta westwoodi grandi), this involves boring through a tough, unripened fig with her immensely long ovipositor in order to find the larvae of other insects that are already developing within, which she then parasitizes to give her own eggs the best start in life.

The following video shows the Apocryta westwoodi as it bores into a fig with its extra-long ovipositor. SPOILER ALERT: There’s a really cool surprise ending!

Next, they investigated the material from which the drill bit was made in order to find out what made it so hard. Focusing a beam of electrons on the minute tip, they recorded the X-ray spectra emitted by the material and discovered that the tooth structures were enriched with zinc.

They then prodded the minute drill bit with an atomic force microscope probe to measure how hard the zinc-enriched teeth were, and they found them to be almost as hard as the acrylic cement used for dental implants.

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Teaming up with graduate student Laksminath Kundanati, Gundiah used scanning electron microscopy to take a high resolution look at the tips of the insects’ ovipositors and was amazed to see that the end of the boring wasp’s ovipositor looked like a drill bit, complete with teeth to bore through the woody fruit. When they looked along the length of the borer’s ovipositor, they also noticed tiny pits in the shaft, roughly in the location where the structure bends as the female drives the tip into the fruit to allow the ovipositor to flex without breaking. They could also clearly see sensory structures at the tip that could help guide the ovipositor to the best locations for the wasp to lay her eggs.

Having characterized the fig wasp’s drill bit, Gundiah is keen to design a minute boring tool based on the lessons she has learned from these insects.

From mouthparts and antennae to legs, wings, and even ovipositors—insects taste with a host of body parts that far outpaces mere tongues. A new review in Annals of the Entomological Society of America tallies tasting techniques in insects and finds a line of research ripe for deeper exploration. [Read more]

Meet Bernardo Santos, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, expert in the evolution of parasitic wasps, and subject of the next installment of our “Standout Early Career Professionals” series. [Read more]

Namrata Gundiah, from the Indian Institute of Science, was intrigued by this egg-delivery system and wondered how the wasp’s ovipositor, which is 7-8 millimeters long, could bore through the woody fruit. Using scanning electron microscopy and an atomic force microscope probe, she found that these tiny fig wasps are equipped with a zinc-tipped drill bit. Her research was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.