European Paper Wasp on Tansy Ragwort
I'm feeling a bit frustrated. I'm much less interested in the taxonomic identification of the players in the game than I am in the ecological question of what is going on in the image. I'm feeling like the site should be named iTaxonimist instead of iNaturalist right now.
What I'm seeing is European Paper Wasp a known meat hunter running a convoy to a plant that is poisonous to it where the only other insect there is probably more poisonous than the plant it is feeding on. I have trouble believing the wasp is collecting the poisonous plant directly as building material and wonder if the moth larve is preprocessing the plant material producing a relatively poison free cellulose building material that is safe for use by the wasp. A Naturalists sort of question and don't even get a friendly "I don't Know" or a "That's interesting can you help gather more information? I need to see this..."
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European Paper Wasp (Polistes dominula)Observer
little_mousieDescription
What is going on? The plant is Tansy Ragwort poisonous to everything except Tyria jacobaeae aka Cinnabar Moth also seen in the picture. The wasps were working the plant with a purpose starting at the bottom and working their way up to the top. If they were collecting the young Cinnabar Moth larve to feed their own larve I would expect a colony crash since they collect and concentrate the poison from the plant. I would expect them to poison them selves if they collect the plant directly for fiber. Is is possible that they are collecting the Cinnabar Moth waste as a source of decontaminated cellulose for best building?.
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