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Vespidae
The Vespidae are a large (nearly 5000 species), diverse, cosmopolitan family of wasps, including nearly all the known eusocial wasps (such as '' Polistes fuscatus'', '' Vespa orientalis'', and ''Vespula germanica'') and many solitary wasps. Each social wasp colony includes a queen and a number of female workers with varying degrees of sterility relative to the queen. In temperate social species, colonies usually last only one year, dying at the onset of winter. New queens and males (drones) are produced towards the end of the summer, and after mating, the queens hibernate over winter in cracks or other sheltered locations. The nests of most species are constructed out of mud, but polistines and vespines use plant fibers, chewed to form a sort of paper (also true of some stenogastrines). Many species are pollen vectors contributing to the pollination of several plants, being potential or even effective pollinators, while others are notable predators of pest insect species, and a f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polistes
''Polistes'' is a cosmopolitan genus of paper wasps and the only genus in the tribe Polistini. Vernacular names for the genus include umbrella wasps, coined by Walter Ebeling in 1975 to distinguish it from other types of paper wasp, in reference to the form of their nests, and umbrella paper wasps. ''Polistes'' is the single largest genus within the family Vespidae, with over 200 recognized species. Their innate preferences for nest-building sites leads them to commonly build nests on human habitation, where they can be very unwelcome; although generally not aggressive, they can be provoked into defending their nests. All species are predatory, and they may consume large numbers of caterpillars, in which respect they are generally considered beneficial. Description As part of subfamily Polistinae, ''Polistes'' wasps are covered in short and inconspicuous hair, have a clypeus with a pointed apex, have a gena that is wide throughout, tergum 1 of the metasoma is almost straig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as bees and ants are deeply nested within the wasps, having evolved from wasp ancestors. Wasps that are members of the clade Aculeata can sting their prey. The most commonly known wasps, such as yellowjackets and hornets, are in the family Vespidae and are eusocial, living together in a nest with an egg-laying queen and non-reproducing workers. Eusociality is favoured by the unusual haplodiploid system of sex determination in Hymenoptera, as it makes sisters exceptionally closely related to each other. However, the majority of wasp species are solitary, with each adult female living and breeding independently. Females typically have an oviposit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polistes Fuscatus
''Polistes fuscatus'', whose common name is the dark or northern paper wasp, is widely found in eastern North America, from southern Canada through the southern United States. It often nests around human development. However, it greatly prefers areas in which wood is readily available for use as nest material, therefore they are also found near and in woodlands and savannas.Evans, H. (1963). ''Wasp Farm.'' Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ''P. fuscatus'' is a social wasp that is part of a complex society based around a single dominant foundress along with other cofoundresses and a dominance hierarchy. Taxonomy and phylogeny ''P. fuscatus'' is a part of the order Hymenoptera, the suborder Apocrita, the family of Vespidae, and the subfamily Polistinae, the second-largest subfamily within the Vespidae, of which all are social wasps.Arevalo, Elisabeth, Yong Zhu, James Carpenter, and Joan Strassmann. (2004). The Phylogeny of the Social Wasp Subfamily Polistinae: Evidencefrom Microsat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stenogastrinae
The Stenogastrinae are a subfamily of social wasps included in the family Vespidae. They are sometimes called hover wasps owing to the particular hovering flight of some species. Their morphology and biology present interesting peculiarities. Systematic position The first reports on stenogastrine wasps can be found in a book of Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville, Guérin de Méneville (1831) with the first known species, ''Stenogaster fulgipennis''. Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure treated their systematic position and remarked that these wasps were, in all their characters, entirely intermediate between the two subfamilies of Eumeninae and Vespinae. In 1927, Anton Schulthess-Rechberg, Anton von Schulthess-Rechberg created the new genus ''Parischnogaster'' for some species living in the Oriental region. Dutch entomologist Jacobus van der Vecht created four new genera including species from the entire area of distribution and described tens of new species. He revised the two Pap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vespa Orientalis
The Oriental hornet (''Vespa orientalis'') is a social insect species of the family Vespidae. It can be found in Southwest Asia, Northeast Africa, the island of Madagascar (but no reports have been made of its presence on the island for many years), the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of Southern Europe. Oriental hornets have also been found in a few isolated locations such as Mexico and Chile due to human introduction.Ríos, Mauro; Barrera, Roberto; Contreras, José (2020) Primer reporte del género ''Vespa'' Linnaeus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Vespinae) en Chile. ''Revista Chilena de Entomología'' 46:237-242. 10.35249/rche.46.2.20.14. The Oriental hornet lives in seasonal colonies consisting of caste system dominated by a queen. The hornet builds its nests underground and communicates using sound vibrations. The hornet has a yellow stripe on its cuticle (insect anatomy), cuticle (exoskeleton), which can absorb sunlight to generate a small electrical potential, and this might h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeovespa Florissantia
''Palaeovespa'' is an extinct genus of wasp in the Vespidae subfamily Vespinae. The genus currently contains eight species: five from the Priabonian stage Florissant Formation in Colorado, United States, two from the middle Eocene Baltic amber deposits of Europe, and one species from the late Paleocene of France. History and classification The genus was first described by Dr. Theodore Cockerell in a 1906 paper published in the '' Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology''. The genus name is a combination of the Greek ', meaning "old" and ''vespa'' from the genus ''Vespa'', the type genus of the family Vespidae where ''Palaeovespa'' is placed. Along with the genus description, the paper contained the description of the type species ''P. florissantia'', ''P. scudderi'' and ''P. gillettei'' all from the Florissant Formation. Cockerell described a fourth species, ''P. baltica'' in 1909 from a specimen in Baltic amber. Five years later, in 1914, Cockerell described another speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euparagiinae
The Euparagiinae are a small subfamily of rare wasps in the family Vespidae containing a single extant genus '' Euparagia''. The group had a cosmopolitan distribution in past geological times extending back to the Early Cretaceous, but is now a geographically relict taxon known only from the desert regions of the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This subfamily, with this same rank, has been previously grouped with the pollen wasps and treated together as the family "Masaridae". Now, the Euparagiinae are considered an independent subfamily and the sister group of the remainder of the Vespidae. Their wing venation is unique and differs from all other Vespidae; they also characteristically have a single small pale spot at the posterior edge of the mesonotum, and the femora and trochanters of the male front legs are modified in species-specific shapes. The biology of only one species ('' Euparagia scutellaris'') is known, and the females provision nests in the so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hornet
Hornets (insects in the genus ''Vespa'') are the largest of the Eusociality, eusocial wasps, and are similar in appearance to yellowjackets, their close relatives. Some species can reach up to in length. They are distinguished from other Vespinae, vespine wasps by the relatively large vertex (anatomy), top margin of the head. Worldwide, 22 species of ''Vespa'' are recognized.A.H. Smith-Pardo, J.M. Carpenter, L. Kimsey (2020) The diversity of hornets in the genus ''Vespa'' (Hymenoptera: Vespidae; Vespinae), their importance and interceptions in the United States. Insect Systematics and Diversity 4(3) https://doi.org/10.1093/isd/ixaa006 Most species only occur in the tropics of Asia, though the European hornet (''V. crabro'') is widely distributed throughout Europe, Russia, North America, and north-eastern Asia. Wasps native to North America in the genus ''Dolichovespula'' are commonly referred to as hornets (e.g., baldfaced hornets), but all of them are actually yellowjackets. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eumeninae
Potter wasps (or mason wasps), the Eumeninae, are a cosmopolitan wasp group currently considered a subfamily of Vespidae, but sometimes recognized in the past as a separate family, Eumenidae. Mud dauber wasps, which also build their nests with mud, are in the families Sphecidae and Crabronidae and not discussed here. Recognition Most eumenine species are black or brown, and commonly marked with strikingly contrasting patterns of yellow, white, orange, or red (or combinations thereof), but some species, mostly from tropical regions, show faint to strong blue or green metallic highlights in the background colors. Like most vespids, their wings are folded longitudinally at rest. They are particularly recognized by the following combination of characteristics: # a posterolateral projection known as a parategula on both sides of the mesoscutum; # tarsal claws cleft; # hind coxae with a longitudinal dorsal carina or folding, often developed into a lobe or tooth, and; # fore wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vespula Germanica
''Vespula germanica'', known colloquially as the European wasp, German wasp, or German yellowjacket, is a species of wasp found in much of the Northern Hemisphere, native to Europe, Northern Africa, and temperate Asia. It has spread and become well-established in many other places, including North America, South America (Argentina and Chile), Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. German wasps are part of the family Vespidae and are sometimes mistakenly referred to as paper wasps because they build grey paper nests, although strictly speaking, paper wasps are part of the subfamily Polistinae. In North America, they are also known as yellowjackets. Taxonomy and phylogeny ''Vespula germanica'' belongs to the genus ''Vespula'', which includes various species of social wasps that are found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. In North America, these wasps are most commonly known as Yellow jacket, yellowjackets, but this name also applies to species within the sister genus ''Dolic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Median Wasp
The median wasp (''Dolichovespula media'') is a species of social wasp of the family Vespidae found throughout Europe and Asia. It builds aerial paper nests often in shrubs or trees, and occasionally under the eaves of buildings. It is most common to see this wasp between May and October during its 3.3 month colony cycle. Behaviours of this wasp include nest defense, curling which is believed to function in brood incubation, and gastral vibration which is involved in larval feeding. The median wasp has a haplodiploidy, Sex-determination system, sex determination system that results in a high level of relatedness within the colony. This species is not usually aggressive but will sting if they feel their nest is threatened. Most foraging in the nest is done by the workers once the first ones reach adulthood. These workers forage for insects, nectar, and wood for nest construction in temperatures as low as . The median wasp is known to be occasionally affected by the fungus Cordyceps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
