Today Chuck and Josh look at the interesting relationship between figs and wasps.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and what is this episode about?
Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff.
I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, sitting in for Dave. So this is Short Stuff.
Chapter 2: What is the unique relationship between figs and fig wasps?
Yeah, this is an episode where I was very surprised, and I even went back, that when we did our episode on wasps, we even got emails about this, so I'm pretty sure we did not cover it. Yeah. But we're talking about fig wasps of the fig tree specifically, not the kind that you see, like almost all fig tree varieties are not ones that you eat the fruit of.
That's a very specific one, the ones like you have out in your yard, They develop without pollination, which means they're parthenocarpic. But the ones where you eat the figs, they are grown commercially mainly in California here in the United States. They are calamurna figs, and they are imported from Turkey.
And the ficus carica, or the fig wasp, is also imported from Turkey because they have a very special relationship.
Yeah, so fig wasps and that specific kind of fig apparently co-evolved over the last 60 million years to form a mutually symbiotic relationship, as our friend Connor from Love on the Spectrum would say, where the fig wasp depends on the fig for its reproductive cycle. The fig depends on the fig wasp for its reproductive cycle. And if you didn't have one or the other,
Chapter 3: How do fig wasps contribute to the fig's reproductive cycle?
The other one would not exist.
Yeah, totally. And we're going to tell you how that happens right now. I was going to say right after this, but that would be way too soon. First thing we need to say is that the fig, the thing that you're eating, it's something within a larger structure, and it's called a zirconium, is what you're actually eating. It's sort of like an inverted flower. It's not really a fruit necessarily. No.
And what happens is these Calamarna farmers in California – They have female trees that are going to produce that edible version of the zirconia, and they have male trees that produce an inedible version called a gall fig. And if they want to pollinate those, a wasp has to crawl into that zirconium.
A female wasp, she loses her wings on the way because she has to squeeze through a tight little passage. It's a one-way trip, which is very sad. And you end up eating that female wasp. She's broken down by something called phycine. It's a protein-digesting enzyme. So when you eat a fig, there is a little bit of female wasp inside of that thing just broken down and becoming part of that edible fig.
Yeah, but essentially you're not going to be able to detect it on your tongue. Some people think that the little tiny seeds inside of a fig are wasp parts because there's been such a legend that developed about fig wasps. And it is true to some degree, but for the most part, no, you're not detecting a fig wasp's body or exoskeleton when you're eating a fig. You are eating part of a wasp, though.
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Chapter 4: What happens to the female fig wasp inside the fig we eat?
Make no mistake. Yeah.
For sure. And I mentioned it was a one-way trip. It's fairly sad that that happens, but it's all in good service of that mutual arrangement. Before that happens, this female wasp is going to come out of an inedible male fig. I guess I'm going to call it a fruit because she was born there, and she has mated by that point with a blind, wingless male wasp who never leaves that male fig.
Mm-hmm.
So she exits that inedible male fig. She picks up some pollen. She's got all these eggs. And at that point, she can either go to a male fig tree or a female fig tree. But if she lands on that female fig tree, her ovipositor is too short to reach into this really long-styled female flower. So she can't lay those eggs in there. She does end up pollinating it, but she sacrifices her life in doing so.
Yeah, she makes it all the way to the synconium and finds, like, I've literally just wasted my life. But her life is not a waste because if she didn't accidentally enter a female fig where she was trying to reproduce or lay her eggs in a male fig, then the figs would not get pollinated.
So figs get pollinated because fig wasps sometimes make mistakes when choosing a male or a female fig to burrow into and lay their eggs. I find that amazing.
Yeah, it's pretty great. Like it works both ways. If she goes into that male fig, then she's going to deposit those fertilized eggs. And that circle just kind of keeps going on and on. Farmers separate these trees out to try and keep them from doing that.
I protest that. I'm protesting.
Oh, you're protesting them doing that?
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Chapter 5: Why do farmers separate male and female fig trees?
Well, you're wrong, my friend, because this farmer that was interviewed said that they separate those male and female trees. I don't think he's just making that up to aggravate you. What if he's completely off his rocker? I mean, are all the farmers and all the sources completely off their rocker?
So I think this is just one of those times where we're going to have to agree to disagree. Do you agree? Sure. That's very agreeable of you.
All right. We'll be back right after this.
This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler. Ed Helms is here. I, of course, was drawn to the LSD story. In the 1950s, a CIA scientist secretly bought the entire world supply of LSD, embarking on a horrific attempt to discover the secrets to mind control.
This is so insane. This was all under like official government activity. They built a apartment in San Francisco that had a glass mirror where he could sit there and watch. And then they would drug these customers. And he was just sort of taking notes and God knows what else behind this double mirror. And this was all in the name of science.
This just sounds like a guy f***ing off behind a wall. It does. I would just also like to say if you don't have to take LSD like this, LSD can be microdosed. It's like an upper of energy, enthusiasm, makes you less nervous if I'm going heli-skiing.
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Chapter 6: What disagreements exist about fig tree pollination?
If it allows me to go hella-skiing, then yeah, I'm hella on board.
Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.
And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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