Thread by @DrRossPiper

Today I've been unpacking some beewolves. Follow the thread for a whistle-stop tour of some of the internal anatomy of these wasps.

Here's the abdomen with the ventral plates (sternites removed). Lots of important gubbins (technical term) in here. Most animals have a ventral nerve cord - very easy to see here.

Teasing all of the above apart you can reveal all of the organ systems in the abdomen. First off, here's the gut. The three sections are easy to see. At the junction of the mid gut and the hind gut are the Malphigian tubules - important for excretion and osmoregulation

And here's the bit I was after - the venom apparatus. Look at the size of the venom gland tubules. Venom is synthesised in the glands and stored in the reservoir

Here's another one of the venom apparatus, but here the ovaries and nerve cord are still attached. These aren't all the ovaries. They take up a good proportion of the abdomen.

Here's most of the abdominal nerve cord. Each abdominal segment is served by a cluster of nerve cells (ganglion). You can see the nerves coming from these ganglia.

Beewolves are extremely energetic animals, which need an efficient way of getting gases to and from their tissues. Here, you can see some of the air sac system which branches off into a network of airways - the trachea.

Here's a better view of some of the trachea