Meet Elizabeth Tibbetts

Elizabeth Tibbetts, PhD, is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Michigan

Studying wasps

Dr. Tibbetts studies paper wasps. She is particularly interested in how individual wasps make decisions, such as whether to cooperate or compete with others. 

Most wasps are female, and every female is born with the potential to be queen. In social insect research, scientists usually only study the females. Males only appear for a few months near the end of the season to mate.

Facial recognition

Dr. Tibbetts discovered that wasps have the ability to recognize other individuals’ faces, a rare phenomenon in invertebrates. 

Working with the Polistes fuscatus species, Dr. Tibbetts painted the faces of wasps to see how they would be received back in their nests.

Eavesdropping

Knowing that they could recognize faces, Dr. Tibbetts and her team wondered if wasps are capable of social eavesdropping, a passive behavior where an individual can learn about social interactions by observing others.  

Social eavesdropping is common in many other species, including fish and primates. This was the first time scientists observed it in insects.

Meet dominula

Another species of wasp Dr. Tibbetts works with is Polistes dominula. These wasps have distinctive marks on their faces which correlate with fighting ability. Stronger wasps have more wavy black splotches and weaker wasps tend to have entirely yellow faces.

Logical guesses

Working with Polistes dominula, Dr. Tibbetts and her team were able to demonstrate that wasps are capable of making logical guesses. In the lab, they trained wasps to discern between pairs of colors, then observed similar inferences from combinations of colors they’d never seen.

Camp Wasp

To further understand wasp social networks, Dr. Tibbetts and her team have set up a field study site at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. 

Emily Laub, EEB post-doctoral fellow, guides us through an exciting day of wasp field research.

Who’s who

In their field experiments, Tibbetts Lab members mark each wasp with different colored paint so they can determine who’s who. They record the encounters between these specific wasps as they eventually form stable social groups.

Top wasp

Every wasp is born with the potential to be a queen. Through field observation, lab members watch two wasps at a newly formed nest to see who will become the leader.