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In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we discuss if a crocheted wasp nest could actually attract wasps and keep them from invading your property. Then we talk about how sewage is impacting the resilience of coral reefs.

Transcript of this Episode

Sam Jones: Welcome to Tiny Show and Tell Us, the bonus series where you write in with your favorite science news or factoid, we read your email aloud and then dive deeper. I'm Sam Jones and I'm here with my co-host Deboki Chakravarti.

Deboki Chakravarti: Hey Sam. I'm really excited to be here. We don't know how to talk today, but I think we're going to get our act together.

Sam Jones: Yes.

Deboki Chakravarti: It's going to be great because these episodes are a lot of fun. And before we kick things off, I want to give a huge thank you to Tien Nguyen for doing the research for this episode. And also a reminder to our listeners that we really like to hear all of the things that you guys are learning so that we can do these episodes because it's just a lot of fun.

Sam Jones: Yes.

Deboki Chakravarti: We get to like dive into all these areas of the world that we might not have known existed. So if you are looking to be featured on an episode, email tinymatters@acs.org or fill out the form linked in the episode description. So should we get started Sam?

Sam Jones: Yeah, let's hop into it. Do you want to go first this time?

Deboki Chakravarti: I sure will. So I have something from listener Andrew. Andrew says, "Since hornets are territorial, you can use a fake wasp nest, like a crocheted look-alike to deter hornets from building nests nearby."

Sam Jones: Yeah. I'm interested in what Tien found here.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. Andrew also included a link to a news story about someone who crocheted a nest to keep hornets away. But we wanted to see does this actually work? To start off with the concept of a hornet, I don't know about you, but like I do not always really know the difference between all of the flying creatures out there.

Sam Jones: The flying stinging bugs.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah, exactly. You're like, you sting, you fly, you're all the same to me. Obviously they are not. So I just want to start off with the difference between bees and wasps and hornets. Bees are the cute ones. That's how I remember them basically.

Sam Jones: The fuzzies.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. They have fuzzy bodies and that makes them immediately adorable. And also they make honey, which is great. There are around 20,000 species of bees. And also fun fact that Tien found that I did not know, apparently the average bee makes 1 12th of a teaspoon of honey over its lifetime.

Sam Jones: That's so little.

Deboki Chakravarti: Right. That feels so little. But I guess there's a lot of bees in a hive. So maybe it's just like ...

Sam Jones: So many bees.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah.

Sam Jones: Yeah, that makes sense. But it does feel very small. But bees are also very small, so I don't know.

Deboki Chakravarti: They're tiny.

Sam Jones: I think I'm judging.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. We are judging, especially for people who can't make honey.

Sam Jones: I know. I'm like, I love honey and so I'm judging.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. The other thing about bees that is very sad because they're cute, it doesn't happen because they're cute, it's sad because they're cute. The thing that's sad about bees is that when they sting you, they die.

Sam Jones: I knew that. That's very sad.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. Meanwhile, wasps, not very cute. I apologize to anyone who does think wasps are cute, but they are not cute. They are actually quite creepy in a cool way, but creepy because they will lay their eggs inside of prey. They can also sting more than once. So not great, but only the female wasps can sting. There are also more than 100,000 species of wasps.

Sam Jones: Okay. So in terms of bees and wasps, both of those, way more species than I realized, that's over 120,000 species in total between them.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah.

Sam Jones: If you had asked me, I'd be like, 17.

Deboki Chakravarti: Bugs are just so diverse.

Sam Jones: They are.

Deboki Chakravarti: We should maybe be doing more bug episodes.

Sam Jones: Yeah. We were starting to tackle plants more. I'm like, where are the insect people that are going to come after us soon?

Deboki Chakravarti: Yep. Also, so now getting to hornets. Hornets are a specific type of wasp. There are 22 species of them, and they're usually fatter than common wasps and their venom has painful chemicals in it, which makes their sting hurt. They can grow to 5.5 centimeters, which is too big.

Sam Jones: Yeah, that's huge.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. Okay. So one of the things though is that both bees and hornets are territorial, but they're territorial in different ways. So in some bee species, the males will be territorial of like a general area, like a flower patch. So they'll chase away males from the female bees and kind of guard the area after mating is done. Hornets are territorial in the way that if their nest or colony is threatened, they will get very, very, very mad.

Sam Jones: Okay.

Deboki Chakravarti: So I don't know if you've had experience with this. We've had yellow jackets in our yard. They are mad. They get mad.

Sam Jones: They're relentless.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. And so I remember our friends told us about it, and my husband and I are kind of super naive about a lot of home ownership details, especially in the Northeast dealing with bugs. And so our friends were like, "You guys got to watch out." And so my husband had to like fully deck out wearing clothes on clothes on clothes to try to make sure that yellow jackets could not get anywhere inside and target him as he was trying to eradicate this nest. It was very funny, but only for me because I got to stay inside and watch him deal with it.

So could a decoy nest have solved this problem? And the answer is most likely no, unfortunately. So there's a really detailed post from askentomologists.com where there aren't really any peer reviewed studies showing that decoy nests work. And more to the point, in nature, we know that just because there's a nest set up by one wasp, other wasps will also set up a nest nearby. So you can't necessarily trust that like, oh, the wasps are going to see a nest and they're going to be like, "No, I don't want to build our nest here either."

Sam Jones: Right. They most likely would just want to make their own anyway. So the decoy nest could be there, but they might literally build a nest right next to it.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah, exactly. So obviously like there are these articles, there is this idea that decoy nests work. And so obviously like there is the article that Andrew sent in where someone reported that their decoy nest worked. And so the question is why? Why did that work? And so Ask Entomologist, they suggest a few reasons for why this kind of anecdotal evidence seems to be out there. It could just be that the wasps decided to settle somewhere else, like maybe they just didn't want to be there. Maybe there was also pesticides being used in the area. Maybe there was some other kind of change in the habitat that happened, made it so that wasps didn't want to settle down there. Yeah, there's other reasons. And it most likely isn't the decoy nest, unfortunately. Andrew, I hope you're not trusting or relying solely on a decoy nest to prevent wasps. And also like the thing with wasps is they are terrible, but I think they are supposed to be useful for controlling other insect populations as well. So I think there's one of those trade-offs.

Sam Jones: There's going to be someone who writes in, "Justice for wasps."

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah, yeah. If you're a justice for wasps person, let us know what we don't know about wasps and why we should really keep them around.

Sam Jones: Change my mind. Awesome. Thanks Deboki and thanks Andrew. Okay, so I have something from listener Jasmine who wrote in saying, "Corals in sewage polluted waters fare worse than those in cleaner water or better quality water during high water temperature events. These events are occurring more frequently and for longer durations as a result of climate change. Let's talk about how getting poop out of the water is a win-win-win for corals and for people."

Deboki Chakravarti: I think this is becoming your beat. You're becoming a get poop out of the water person.

Sam Jones: Yeah, I really am. I'm not embarrassed. That sounds great.

Deboki Chakravarti: That's a good platform.

Sam Jones: Yeah.

Deboki Chakravarti: I'm not going to sit here and be like, "Let's get the poop in the water."

Sam Jones: Yeah. I'm like, people can get behind getting poop out of water. Okay, so let's just start with the impact of higher water temperatures on coral reefs to begin with. Warmer water temperatures can result in something called coral bleaching, which I think a lot of people have heard of and we actually talked about in a super early episode of Tiny Matters. So this is when water is so warm that the corals will expel the algae called zooxanthellae that live in their tissues and that causes the coral to turn white. It's bleached at that point, and that makes it really vulnerable. First off, algae is its major source of food, but also now it's more susceptible to disease.

So what are the impacts of sewage on coral reefs? There are a bunch of things going on here. So now let's talk sewage. Sewage carries a bunch of stuff in it, but generally excess nutrients, chemical pollutants, turbidity, which is like a general term. It just means cloudy water due to suspended particles like soil or other organic matter that maybe is introduced by industrial activity or storms or other events. And all of this seems to leave corals more susceptible to thermal stress and less able to survive a coral bleaching event. Chronic wastewater stress prevents reef communities from recovering after a bleaching event. It makes them more sensitive to ocean warming and acidification. And again, it's like, but why? But why? So we're going to kind of get into that.

So it seems like high inorganic nutrient content is the primary reason for concern. So inorganic nutrients are compounds that do not contain carbon and include minerals like calcium and phosphorus. So those nutrients could lead to increased growth of algae and coral diseases. Sewage is also known to contain ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate, and that nutrient enrichment can actually enhance macro algal overgrowth. That will actually take over the territories of corals and can kill them.

And another thing that was really surprising to me is that the primary component of sewage is freshwater. And I guess that freshwater is a known stressor to corals.

Deboki Chakravarti: Interesting. That makes sense.

Sam Jones: Increased freshwater input into coastal waters is associated with stormwater runoff, has been correlated with rapid drops in the nearshore salinity, and then that leads to a reduction in corals that are nearby. So you really need that salt balance. Throwing it off is a huge issue.

Deboki Chakravarti: That makes sense.

Sam Jones: Yeah. And then about a decade ago, the elkhorn coral, A. palmata, I guess was experiencing a major die-off in the Florida Keys. Around 70% of the coral cover was lost owing to something called white pox disease, where you have these irregular patches or blotches on the coral that result from the loss of coral tissue. Scientists did some experiments in the lab and showed that sewage was the cause of the disease because it was actually ... The real cause of the disease was a human pathogen, just like, oops. Yeah. It seems like today the coral species is still threatened. So anyways, there's so many different factors that are involved in this, but I thought it was interesting where it's like the warming temperatures, the sewage, the different things in sewage, things like freshwater that are in sewage. So there's so many things that are at play here.

And so there are a lot of governmental and NGO efforts to increase education, monitoring and regulation that would reduce sewage from getting into the ocean. I think we all generally know that. I guess the Coral Reef Alliance is one of the largest NGOs that's working on solutions for protecting corals. A few of their solutions are, of course, water quality monitoring to understand the problem. What's the source? What's the magnitude of the issue? They also will build and update sustainable wastewater treatment infrastructures, which means they have to collaborate with governments and local communities. Also, there's a lot of community education. They will also talk a lot with property owners who have shoreline properties about employing reef-friendly best practices. So ways of essentially making sure that ... I'm sure part of that has to do with how old is your sewage treatment? How old is your sewage system? During weather events are you having a bunch of runoff from your lawn? What are you using as fertilizer? That kind of stuff.

They also will, "Restore and reforest streams and watersheds to create healthy landscapes that capture and stabilize nutrients and sediments before they reach the ocean." Those are their words.

And then the UN also has a transnational initiative called The Global Wastewater Initiative that's also focused on raising awareness and sharing best practices for wastewater management. Particularly, there was one case in particular that I saw where they were working with villages that are situated along rivers, a lot of times in less developed areas, to really talk with people about reducing contamination, making sure that waste doesn't actually get into the river. So there's a lot that people are trying to do, but this is definitely an issue. I mean, sewage, you don't want it in our bodies of water. Climate change, increasing ocean temperatures, water temperatures, generally speaking, combined with things like sewage are having an even more devastating impact. So this is multifactorial, but I thought it was really interesting to kind of think about the interplay here.

Deboki Chakravarti: For sure.

Sam Jones: And uh, let's keep poop out of water.

Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. Thank you to Andy and Jasmine for writing into Tiny Show and Tell Us, a bonus episode from Tiny Matters created by the American Chemical 中国365bet中文官网 and produced by Multitude. And a big thank you again to Tien Nguyen for doing the research for this episode.

Sam Jones: Send us an email to be featured in a future Tiny Show and Tell Us episode at tinymatters@acs.org or fill out the form that's linked in the episode description. We'll see you next time.

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