People should hug wasps because they play an `important role’ in life as `pest controllers and pollinators’, according to a top bug boffin.
Seirian Sumner, a professor in behavioural ecology, said she has been ‘surprised and pleased’ to see Brits had noticed the stingers had gone missing this summer.
The University College London boff said she has spent her career trying to change people’s minds about these fascinating insects’.
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She reckons they are ‘one of our most maligned insects’ and was relieved people were worried about their declining numbers, as the Daily Star has revealed.
(Image: Getty Images)
Instead of whacking wasps she wants folk to record sightings so experts can learn more about them and monitor the population.
She said every year she has to `step in with a defence of wasps about their important role in ecosystems as pest controllers and pollinators’.
“Wasps are apex predators in the same way as lions are in the African savannah,’’ she said.
“If lions disappeared all organisms in that ecosystem would be affected.
“So the more we know about wasps the more we can be effective guardians of our ecosystems. All insects – even wasps – are important parts of nature that deserve care and concern.’’
(Image: Getty Images)
Seirian said unseasonal cold weather was probably the reason wasp numbers were down this year.
They and the creatures they eat – flies, caterpillars, beetles, bees and other invertebrates – do not thrive in the cold making a `poor spring’ a `double-whammy for wasps’.
She said there was `no doubt that insect populations are declining globally driven by pesticides, herbicides and changes in how land is being used’.
But it was`unwise to pass judgement on any insect population based on a single year’ – which is why the public should help monitor them.
“We need better data on wasps from across different landscapes and geographies to determine the factors that make wasps resilient – or vulnerable – to the combined effects of changing weather, climate and land use,’’ she said.
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