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We are studying Africa's needle-waist wasps, Belonogaster
Much of our group's research focuses on the wonderful African wasp genus Belonogaster
In 1916, working in the Congo, the French biologist Emile Roubaud speculated that tropical social wasps held the answers to many enigmas about the evolution of cooperation.
"Tropical biology is, without doubt, key to solving those riddles of insect social behaviour that are still mysterious."
Emile Roubaud (1916)
"L'étude des formes tropicales au point de vue biologique est appelée sans doute à préciser bien des problèmes encore obscurs de la vie sociale chez les Insectes."
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Early encounters with Belonogaster
In his 1909 monograph on Belonogaster, du Buysson points to a painful experience suffered by the "celebrated explorer botanist" M. Auguste Chevalier. In Chevalier's own words:
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