By Brad Haire, The University of Georgia
Over the years, Glen Rains and his wasps have been in front of many cameras, receiving both national and international media attention. But when National Geographic called the Tifton-based researcher, he was a bit more excited to get back under the lights.
"As a scientist, I felt like National Geographic's interest would focus more on the science of things rather than just the novelty of this project, which is something I’m much more interested in," said Rains, a biological and agricultural engineer on the UGA Tifton Campus.
In May, a film crew visited the UGA Tifton Campus to interview Rains and film his research program there that conditions wasps to detect various scents, like those released by a stressed plant or even a corpse. The segment with that footage and interview is scheduled to air on the National Geographic Channel at 10 p.m. Tuesday.
The episode will be on forensics and will include Ashburn police detective Michelle Wiggins and her German Shepherd, Brixa, which were filmed alongside Rains and his wasps to compare how well they'd do against one of nature's most famously sensitive nose.
Using sugar water to train the wasps to associate various scents with food, Rains several years ago developed a machine called the Wasp Hound. This portable nose can monitor the behavior of wasps trained to respond to a particular scent, or volatile compound. The work is based in part on research conducted by retired U.S. Department of Agriculture Tifton scientist Joe Lewis.
The Wasp Hound is a 3-inch pipe about 10 inches long. A fan and a Web camera close one end. Inside, a tray places four or five wasps over a tiny pinhole in the removable white cap that covers the other end.
Once the conditioned wasps are loaded, the fan sucks air through the pinhole in the cap. If the scent they've been trained to recognize whiffs through, they will crowd around the pinhole. If the scent's not there, they just hang out.
The Web camera sends an image of the wasps to a computer. There, software analyzes the amount of dark space created around the pinhole by the wasps against the white background of the cap, giving a more objective view and answer to whether they are having a positive or negative response to the odor they were trained to detect. It doesn't take long for the handler to get the answer.
Rains, who did his 4-H science project as a kid on how fire ants lay chemical trails to find food, believes his wasp research has brought him full circle with his scientific life.
“I lost some of that interest when I went to college, but have found that I am still just as interested in why insects behave the way they do and how they sense odors as I was when I was a kid,” he said. “I am happy that I’m able to take that interest and my engineering background and develop helpful devices that use classical conditioning and interpretation of insect behavior to detect chemicals.”#
