In the wasp family, only the females sting, it was thought. And for good reason, their sting comes from the evolution of an ancient egg depositing organ. A Japanese team has just shown, in the newspaper Current Biology of December 19, that among the mason waspss Anterhynchium gibbifrons, males could also defend themselves by stinging with the spiny end of their genitalia. Misaki Tsujii, of the University of Kobe, paid with a pain in the finger for this discovery. His team then offered a meal of male insects to frogs: stung, a third of them spat out the intruder. On the other hand, the males whose genitals were removed were all swallowed. The team will look at other species with genital spines to see if their finding can be generalized.
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