The Queen of Africa Flashcards
Sycamore Fig Tree evolved
Millions of years ago. Lives for centuries. Provides for many animals. Hunting ground, and a home.
Produces up to a ton of fruit every few months and fruits several times a year, the animals disperse the trees seeds
Fig Wasp, lives for hours. Symbiosis between wasp and fig tree. Pollinates the figs.
Parasitic Wasp attacks the fruits, use a long ovipositor to drill into the fruit. Deposits and egg on the developing fig wasps, the grub kills it and takes over its gall.
But smaller banded wasps has ovipositor just as long but more flexible. The small wasps fight for access and go for the hole left by parasitic wasp. Use the same shaft.
Ants kill any parasites they capture. They also bite and sting larger predators. Attack all invaders except tiny nymphs called Hilda. Look after the eggs, once they hatch they are herded. The nymphs tap into the figs sap and passes rapidly through the nymph giving them a supply of sugar. The wounds left by the nymphs are healed with latex that dries to form a natural rubber which bees take to use to build their own nests.
Grey Hornbill male is sole source of food. Female and chicks sealed inside the trunk. Female lays before the rains, but they are late this year, making food harder to find. After two weeks of no rain the female leaves to get food. Largest chick dominated food supply. Pecking order. The eldest chick develops and breaks down the seal.
Nematode worms burrow into newly hatched female fig wasps and eat her alive but have to keep her alive until she reaches another fig
Monkeys visit everyday when the fruit is orange and ripe.
Fruit bats most important seed disperser. Eats half its weight in figs. Carries the fig a short distance away. Sucks juice and discards seeds.
Elephants can smell the fruit from miles away.
To reproduce the sycamore fig tree must transfer pollen to make seeds and then disperse the seeds inside the figs
After a crop falls, she takes two weeks to grow fruit again. The wasps enter using wedge shaped head but entrance so tight that her wings and antennae are ripped from her. Busts her gut. Must lay eggs before nematodes kill her.
Wasps laden with pollen and eggs journey to the flowers. Wasps lay their eggs inside microscopic white flowers (inside the fruit) which become seeds or nursery for wasp larvae. Unpacks pollen and fertilises the flowers. In a couple of months the fruits are drained of antiseptic. Expose gallheads. The male wasps have powerful jaws, cut open the gall and that of female so as to get in. Male impregnates with long and flexible reproductive organ.
The females then emerge. Wings, large eyes and antennae essential for their mission. The parasite wasps use the fig wasps exit to escape. The nematode worms try to snag a female wasp.
The males then cut flowers . White anthers contain pollen. The females scrape it out and carry it on pockets on her breast.
The males start to tunnel to release the females. Final act.
Females have hours before the nematodes kill them. In search of another fig tree. Can travel up to 100km on the wind.
To feed wasps and seeds she has to make sugars with her leaves
herbivores are a great threat. As are an attack on the “nursery” or on the fruit.
Tree secretes white latex, foul tasting and sticky
small animals get trapped and larger ones leave.
Some insects have evolved to overcome the latex strategy
The fig katydid cuts off the leaf to feed on it
fig longhorn beetle bites main vein of leaf and works outwards to cut off the flow of latex so the beetle can feed
Fermenting juice of dropped fruit attracts vinegar flies
which the pink mantis can eat (also eats katydids)
To try and protect the wasp nursery from parasites
the queen closes the entry to the fig and floods the fruit with an antiseptic but it doesn’t work against nematode worms
nematode worms use the female fig wasps as a trojan horse
breed inside the fig and infect the next generation of wasps
Fig cicadas squirt excess sap so they don’t get their wings sticky
Emerge after rain and tap straight into the sap and like Hilda they excrete what they can’t absorb
Monkeys and birds eat the cicadas
When the cicadas pull out the ants eat the sap and don’t attack the cicada
The trunk runs with sap because of cicadas
Monkeys lick the sugars. But bees arrive in swarms and drive off the monkeys.
