By Emma Jolliff
Wellington scientists have discovered some unusually competitive behaviour between foreign wasps and native ants.
When both try to claim the same bit of food, surprisingly, the wasps don't sting the ants to death - instead they airlift them from the scene.
It seems not even a wasp wants to find bugs in its dinner.
If you watch the video, you can see a vespula vulgaris wasp plucking ants off some tuna, flying backwards and dropping them some centimetres away. This behaviour has never been documented before.
"It's a new kind of behaviour that is aimed at physically preventing competitors to access the food resource," says Julien Grangier.
These wasps invaded New Zealand 30 years ago. Mr Grangier says we now have the highest density of wasps in the world.
You might think the ants would just return to the food, but half of them don't.
"It looks like they are seriously disturbed and disoriented by being dropped by wasps," says Grangier.
Despite their size ants are very aggressive to wasps, biting them or spraying them with acid. In this manoeuvre, the ants aren't hurt, and it's not a failed attempt to kill them.
Grangier says it's simple competitive behaviour to keep the ants away.
"When you have more ants the frequency of this ant dropping behaviour will increase, so the more competitors the more wasps will display this behaviour and also they will drop the ants further away."
The unique behaviour's attracted the attention of the international science community.
"It is thought that wasps don't engage in serious competition with ants because it can be very dangerous for wasps," says Grangier.
Grangier says the results reveal both a novel new interaction, and behavioural plasticity, in that wasps adjust their behaviour according to the number of competitors.
It's not yet known if other wasp species behave the same way.
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