Guinea Paper Wasps
Here's a fairly common wasp that's fairly happy building nests on the ceilings of outdoor structures: Guinea Paper Wasps . I believe this particular nest was under the green-roof pavilion near Duke Farms' Orientation Center. I had trouble getting a good picture because I had to shoot through some wire mesh; I have some sharper pictures here . Guinea Paper Wasps and all their wasp, bee, and ant relatives are haplodiploid insects. This is when sex determination is determined by egg fertilization; no X or Y chromosomes are involved. Unfertilized eggs develop into males/drones while fertilized eggs develop into females. This has some interesting characteristics: If a female mates with only one male, her daughters will (on average) share 75% of their genes since they inherit 50% of their mother's genes but 100% of their father's genes. Because males come from a female's unfertilized eggs, they inherit all their genes from their mothers. Males have no fathers but can...