A. Latreillii, without having a very large implement, also bears witness
to the possibility of heaping up soft resin with a rake; she arms her
mandibles with three or four sharply-cut teeth. In short, out of four
Resin-bees, the only four that I know, one is armed with a spoon, if
this expression be really suited to the tool's function; the three
others are armed with a rake; and it so happens that the most copious
heap of resin is just the work of the rake with the most teeth to it,
a tool suited to the cotton-reapers, according to the views of the
Bordeaux entomological expert.
No, the explanation that appealed to me so much at first is not
admissible. The mandible, whether supplied with teeth or not, does not
account at all for the two manufactures. May we, in this predicament,
have recourse to the general structure of the insect, although this is
not distinctive enough to be of much use to us? Not so either; for,
in the same stone-heaps where the Osmia and the two Resin-bees of the
Snail-shells work, I find from time to time another manipulator of
mastic who bears no structural relationship whatever to the genus
Anthidium. It is a small-sized Mason-wasp, Odynerus alpestris, SAUSS.
She builds a very pretty nest with resin and gravel in the shells of
the young Common Snail, of Helix nemoralis and sometimes of Bulimulus
radiatus. I will describe her masterpiece on some other occasion. To
one acquainted with the genus Odynerus, any comparison with the Anthidia
would be an inexcusable error. In larval diet, in shape, in habits, they
form two dissimilar groups, very far removed one from the other. The
Anthidia feed their offspring on honey-bread; the Odyneri feed it on
live prey. Well, with her slender form, her weakly frame, in which
the most clear-seeing eye would seek in vain for a clue to the trade
practised, the Alpine Odynerus, the game-lover, uses pitch in the same
way as the stout and massive Resin-bee, the honey-lover. She even uses
it better, for her mosaic of tiny pebbles is much prettier than the
Bee's and no less solid. With her mandibles, this time neither spoon nor
rake, but rather a long forceps slightly notched at the tip, she gathers
her drop of sticky matter as dexterously as do her rivals with their
very different outfit. Her case will, I think, persuade us that neither
the shape of the tool nor the shape of the worker can explain the work
done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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