A bulls eye on the wasps
In New Zealand wasps can kill native chicks, insects and honeydew, leaving little food for birds. Wasps have few natural predators and after their mild threatening public safety after a mild winter. New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has run trials of a common insecticide, fipronil, in bait stations targeted at wasps. They aim to create pest-control techniques that would work only on common wasps – baits that, even if eaten by other species such as native honeybees, would leave them unharmed. One technique is limiting the production of chitin, the protein in a wasp’s external skeleton. They would die at a very early stage even before they hatch out of the egg. A small amount would be mixed into bait, brought back to the nest and consumed by the colony. The molecule would enter the body cells of any wasp that ate it, meaning the insect would no longer be able to make the chitin protein. The benefit of this sort of technique is you’re able to target an individual species.
