By Susan Milius
A fig wasp walks into a bar — but if he belongs to one new species, there’s about a one in five chance that he’s bluffing about beating the frass out of somebody.
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Male fig wasps may measure only a few millimeters in length, but they rank among the most violent fighters on Earth. The tiny wasps have fascinated evolutionary biologists because males show an unusually high willingness to battle to the death.
In a newly discovered species, the jagged, cutting jaws grow unusually long in about 18 percent of males, report Jamie Moore of University of Oxford in England and his colleagues in an upcoming Animal Behaviour. After studying body measurements and behavior, Moore and his colleagues propose that those big-mouth males are bluffers when it comes to fighting.