The Canadian painter-turned-photographer Jacques de Tonnancour captured these nocturnal wasps (Apoica pallens) on film in Brazil. At first the wasps crawled all over their nest (top), but within 20 minutes, in a remarkable display of social behaviour, they had aligned themselves to protect the underside of their nest (bottom). De Tonnancour has spent the past 20 years photographing insects around the world. A collection of his work, with an insight into his subjects' ecology, anatomy and behaviour, can be found in Insects Revealed: Monsters or Marvels? (Cornell University Press, 2002), translated from the French by Luke Sandford.