[HN Gopher] A cretaceous fly trap? Remarkable abdominal modifica...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A cretaceous fly trap? Remarkable abdominal modification in a
       fossil wasp
        
       Author : gnabgib
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2025-03-28 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com)
        
       | laptopdev wrote:
       | Ants are vegetables
        
       | throwanem wrote:
       | Interestingly, this might suggest some male wasps' seventh
       | abdominal segment is conserved.
       | 
       | Modern female wasps having other than six abdominal segments I
       | believe to be unknown, and is certainly unknown to me; while
       | fertilized or "foundress" females do share with males the need
       | for extra body space to support functioning and thus unusually
       | large reproductive organs, females specialized for the
       | reproductive role display morphological differences beginning
       | from larvahood to accommodate the task. (In eusocial species,
       | reproductive females or 'gynes' differ from workers or 'ergates'
       | in having the ability to be inseminated; in subsocial species,
       | gynes are raised and fed for the role from birth and as a result
       | simply grow up extra big and strong, with noticeably larger
       | abdomens in body proportion than their sisters whose labor is
       | less deferred.)
       | 
       |  _edit:_ Fixed a bug resulting from a Wikipedia editor doing a
       | lousy job with taxonomy. It is actually possible that some lineal
       | relationship exists between structures described here and those
       | of modern male wasps with a seventh gastral segment.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-03-28 23:00 UTC)