Word: hymenoptera
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...might seem a long way from studying wasps to studying sex, but applied biology graduate student Alfred C. Kinsey '20 apparently learned about the importance of rigorous scientific methods of classification while writing "Studies of Gall Wasps (Cynipidae, Hymenoptera)." He later applied these methods of classification to his famous Kinsey Reports: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, published in 1953. The Kinsey Reports have frequently been called the first scientific examination of American sexual behavior...
Most people can take repeated stings by bees or related insects of the order Hymenoptera with no worse effects than local pain and brief swelling. But some become increasingly more sensitive after successive stings, to the point of a severe, body-wide allergic reaction or even death. Every summer such severe sting reactions are a major problem to doctors; treatment consists in giving antihistamines and adrenalin or a hormone of the cortisone family. But researchers are busy on ways to prevent such cases by helping sensitized victims regain the normal degree of immunity...
...from the sacs is pooled, then injected in small but gradually increasing doses into sensitive subjects. In the New York City area, the doctors found, the most vicious stinger by far is the yellow jacket (Vespula maculifrons, represented elsewhere in the U.S. by closely related species). As with most Hymenoptera, the female of the species is the deadlier-the male has no sting...
...preparation. (In this method, one school argues, there may be a danger of sensitizing a subject to allergy-causing proteins from other parts of the insect's body.) At the Hollister-Stier Laboratories in Spokane, Bacteriologist Edward L. Foubert Jr. has concluded that only a few species of Hymenoptera are important stingers in any one area, and that since most victims do not know just which varieties have stung them, it is best to combine venoms in an extract from the whole bodies of several species...
...course he was referring to termites, which are neither white nor are they ants. Generally yellowish or brownish in color, they belong to the insect order Isoptera which is only remotely related to the Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps...