The Neuron Expedition 2025 has set off
The winning team of the Neuron Expedition 2025, led by Michael Mikát of the Faculty of Science of Charles University, is in the field right now. Their mission has taken them across the ocean to Guatemala, where they will focus on a small but scientifically enormously valuable insect — the digger wasp.
Why fly halfway around the world for a creature barely 5 millimetres long? This inconspicuous insect, a close relative of bees, is the key to understanding one of the greatest mysteries of evolution: how cooperation and sociality arose.
Evolution live
Unlike bees or ants, which are already fully social, in digger wasps we can observe a fascinating transitional state. Some species live "on their own", while in others the females begin to help each other and care for the nest together.
That allows scientists to compare life in a "team" directly with the life of "soloists" and so to watch the evolution of cooperation live, quite literally.
In the field the team is studying how digger wasps build their nests, how they hunt provisions for their larvae (instead of pollen they collect spiders or aphids) and, above all, how and why they decide whether to join forces or risk life alone.
An improvised field studio
Researching and filming such tiny insects calls for improvisation. The team therefore had to build its own field studio in the Guatemalan jungle, made from a mosquito net, clothes pegs and double-sided sticky tape. Now it can film the behaviour of digger wasps in detail.
Nature as a "harsh arena"
As Michael Mikát stresses, though, the aim is not to look for harmony in nature: "It is a very selfish and hard struggle." That is precisely why this research matters. By understanding the basic rules of selfishness and cooperation in a simple system such as digger wasps, we can better design workable systems for humanity too. The goal is that we should all be well off, even when each of us acts from our own motives.
We are keeping our fingers crossed for the whole Neuron Expedition 2025 team in the Guatemalan jungle! Follow the whole course of the expedition with us on our social media and here on our website.
