Unmarked wasp on a pinhead
New research by scientists at The Australian National University will see wasps being tracked in the same way as stolen cars - using specialist microdot technology. The Research School of Biology researchers published a paper in the latest edition of Agricultural and Forest Entomology outlining a successful new tracking technique, which allows them to study insects that were previously too small to track individually. Lead researcher Michael Whitehead was working with the parasitoid thynnine wasp to investigate its role in orchid pollination, but found available tracking methods impractical. "Bee tags were previously used to keep track of small animals, but they were too big in this case, and the electronic devices we could find weren't going to work," he said. "So my brother and I came up with the idea to test out microdots as a tracking system. Microdots were developed by the Australian company DataDot Technology, as a way of tracking stolen property. The plastic microdots are half a millimetre in diameter and contain a personalised code which can be read under a magnifier.
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