As uninvited picnic guests, they are the pest of every late summer, their restless flight putting us all in a tizzy as we fear their burning stings. Rightly so. Not only by their ability to sting, social wasps undermine outdated gender roles. For every spring, a single queen sets to work building a nest for her yet-to-be-born state. But there are also stories of tame wasps whose beauty overwhelms, or of human-animal creatures that fuel erotic fantasies as Wasp Woman, for example. Often referred to as the wild, anarchic counterpart of the well-behaved honeybee, it's time to give this tantalizing yellow-and-black hymenoptera her due: In his portrait, Michael Ohl, one of Germany's leading wasp researchers, paints a multifaceted picture of a helpful ecosystem service provider, an intelligent insect and an evolutionary stroke of luck that we should do everything we can to protect in the face of insect mortality.
Non-fiction
Michael Ohl, born in 1964 in Westphalia, is a scientist at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, an adjunct professor at the Humboldt University Berlin and a passionate wasp researcher for many years. He researches topics in evolutionary biology, systematics and taxonomy, and the history of science.
