British Insects: the Families of Hymenoptera
British Insects: the Families of Hymenoptera |
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Wasps.
Adults medium sized to large; 12–20 mm long. Social insects forming organized communities (melliferous); the adult populations including specialised, sterile females constituting ‘workers’.
Head. Eyes emarginate. Antennal segments (10–)12 (females), or (10–)13 (males). Antennae geniculate, or not geniculate.
Thorax. Thorax black and yellow or brown and yellow. Pronotum deeply indented or emarginate at the back; long, extending back to the tegulae. Cenchri absent. Wings present; folded longitudinally when at rest. Fore-wings with a conspicuous pterostigma (?), or without a pterostigma; with the venation well developed. Closed fore-wing cells 6–10. Submarginal cells 3. Hind-wings with closed cells. Hind femur without a well defined trochantellus. Hind tibiae with spurs specialised for a cleaning rôle.
Abdomen. The abdomen with a marked basal constriction; long petiolate to short-waisted. The ‘waist’ simple. Visible abdominal segments 6 (females), or 7 (males). Gaster colour-patterned; black- or brown-and-yellow. Ovipositor of females not visibly protruding; modified as a retractable sting.
Larvae. Larvae legless or the legs vestigial; feeding on prey collected and stored by the adults.
British representation. Species in Britain 9; Dolichovespula, Polistes, Vespa and Vespula.
Classification. Suborder Apocrita; Series Aculeata; Superfamily Vespoidea.
Illustrations. • Vespula rufa (Anchor-faced Wasp): B. Ent. 760. • Vespula rufa: B. Ent. 760, legend+text. • Vespula rufa: B. Ent. 760, text cont.. • Vespa crabro, Vespula spp., Dolichovespula norwegica (Hornet, Wasps: Saunders XX).
To view the illustrations with captions giving names in current use, go to the interactive key. This also offers full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, distributions of character states within any set of taxa, source references, and other relevant material.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. British insects: the families of Hymenoptera. Version: 28th August 2009. http://delta-intkey.com’.
