Cut off from making fat, parasitic wasps lose pheromones, fail to form eggs and cannot reproduce

The Easter holidays are over and many people have once again experienced firsthand how easily sweets can be converted into fat. Parasitic wasps are also capable of converting sugar into fat—a capability that long was thought to be lost in these insects. Researchers at the Universities of Regensburg and Münster now show in a new study how important this metabolic pathway is for these insects: when so-called lipogenesis—the conversion of sugar into fatty acids and fat—is silenced, the wasps can no longer produce offspring.