Mattila Heather R, Otis Gard W, Billen Johan, Nguyen Lien T P, Shimano Satoshi
Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02841, USA.
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada.
Biology (Basel). 2022 Feb 5;11(2):245. doi: 10.3390/biology11020245.
Many social wasps in the speciose subfamilies Polistinae and Vespinae have two sternal glands-the van der Vecht gland and the Richards gland-that are not found in other insects. The presence of these glands has been confirmed in only 6 of 22 hornet species (genus ) and images of their fine structure have not been produced. Here; we characterize the external morphology associated with both glands for workers of nine species using scanning electron microscopy. All hornets had similar gland configurations; although gland-associated external features differed among species. Scaled for size, glands were equivalently sized for the giant hornets ( and ) and their closest phylogenetic relatives ( and ). Relative size of gland-associated structures was reduced by half for ; ; and workers. The remaining species ( and ) had intermediately sized features. Differences among species in external gland structure were best explained by selective pressures related to predatory behavior, rather than defense of nests against ants. However, a lack of information about how workers use their van der Vecht and Richards glands limits a comparative interpretation of the function of their external gland morphology.
在种类繁多的胡蜂亚科和马蜂亚科中，许多社会性黄蜂都有两个腹板腺——范德维希特腺和理查兹腺，这在其他昆虫中并不存在。在22种黄蜂（属）中，只有6种已证实存在这些腺体，而且尚未生成它们精细结构的图像。在此，我们使用扫描电子显微镜对9种黄蜂工蜂与这两种腺体相关的外部形态进行了表征。所有黄蜂的腺体结构相似，尽管与腺体相关的外部特征在不同物种间存在差异。按大小缩放后，巨型黄蜂（和）及其最近的系统发育近亲（和）的腺体大小相当。、和工蜂与腺体相关结构的相对大小减半。其余物种（和）的特征大小居中。物种间外部腺体结构的差异最好用与捕食行为相关的选择压力来解释，而不是用巢穴防御蚂蚁来解释。然而，由于缺乏关于工蜂如何使用其范德维希特腺和理查兹腺的信息，限制了对其外部腺体形态功能的比较解释。
