Okay, there are some stingers out there

It's Yellowjacket season. Our late summer recreations are colliding with those black-and-yellow striped wasps that look like, well, WASPS. They home in on sugary picnic treats such as catsup and ice cream.

Eastern Yellowjacket, Vespula maculifrons on fallen apples

Yellowjackets search for high-calorie sweets in overripe fruit. They're also liable to surprise you from the inside when you tip up the can of Coke you'd set aside between sips.

Blackjacket, Vespula consobrina

Several types of Yellowjackets (genus Vespula in the family Vespidae) inhabit Halibut Point. They live fairly innocuously in underground nests, but will defend them aggressively if provoked. Unlike bees, they are capable of stinging multiple times without sacrificing either their stingers or their lives.

Widow Yellowjacket, Vespula vidua

Guard wasps release an attack pheromone to mobilize the entire colony if they sense a threat to the nest. A playground in Topsfield was shut down this week when children running up a ramp paid dearly for disturbing the tranquility of Yellowjackets living in a hive underneath it.

Parasitic Yellowjacket, Dolichovespula adulterina

Yellowjackets that nest communally and share at least some work responsibilities are considered social wasps.

Northern Aerial Yellowjacket, Dolichovespula norvegicoides

Their conspicuously striped patterns have been adopted as a defensive measure by insects in many unrelated families.

Common Aerial Yellowjacket, Dolichovespula arenaria

"Yellowjackets" technically consists of two genera within the Vespidae family. The third is true hornets, a more southerly group which I have not yet encountered at Halibut Point.

Bald-faced Hornet, Dolichovespula maculata

The most formidable of the stinging Yellowjackets is the Bald-faced Hornet whose name comes in part from its preference for building large aerial nests in trees and shrubs, as true hornets do.

Northern Paper Wasp, Polistes fuscatus

Besides Yellowjackets the other major group of Vespidae is the Polistine or Paper wasps.

European Paper Wasp nest, Polistes dominula

Paper wasps live communally in honeycomb nests they build in shrubs or on sheltered parts of houses. The nests are limited to a single layer of open cells with minimal outer covering.

Umbrella Paper Wasp, Fuscopolistes

Like bees, adult wasps sustain themselves primarily on flower nectar. However most wasps are well equipped to kill other insects as food for their young.

That capability is usually only a nuisance to creatures the size of humans. In all my years roaming Halibut Point I have never been stung. But the vivid markings are there for a reason.

The Ichneumon Tribes

Always on the alert for new and interesting creatures perched on the vegetation of Halibut Point I occasionally come across slender, sometimes harlequin-patterned winged insects, often with a conspicuous needle-like appendage protruding to their rear, patrolling leaf surfaces behind their long inquisitive antennae.

Phytodietus burgessi, Ichneumonidae

Something about their proportions is immediately distinctive. They belong to the wasp family Ichneumonidae, a word derived from the Greek for 'tracker.' Ichneumon is also the name of an Egyptian mongoose. They have a common lifestyle of frenetic hunting activity.

Atanycolus sp., Braconidae

The larvae of Ichnemonid wasps become parasites of various other insects. They hatch from eggs inserted by an adult female's ovipositor into a living host that is fated to sustain and eventually succumb to the developing wasp larvae. Here is an example of a free-roaming but doomed caterpillar. In other cases the victim may be paralyzed and dragged to a subterranean nest. The Ichneumonidae play an important role in controlling other insect populations that are harmful to human interests, especially agriculture.

Cocoons of a Braconid wasp in the superfamily Ichneumonoidae
attached to a Sphinx moth caterpillar

Braconids and Ichnemonids are closely related divisions of the superfamily Ichneumonoidae. Within it the Ichneumonid constitutes one of the largest and most taxonomically confusing families in the insect world.

An icheumonid of the subfamily Cremastinae

The Ichneumonidae comprises dozens of sub-families just in North America. These are informal taxonomic categories for organizational convenience. Sometimes it's not possible to make a more precise assignment than sub-family from field photographs. Subfamily names end in the suffix -inae.

An icheumonid of the tribe Gravenhorstiini, subfamily Anomaloninae

Similarly, TRIBE is an informal taxonomic category falling between subfamily and genus. Tribe names end in -ini. As one authority put it, "Basically we could say that a tribe is a group of organisms among which the differences are extremely minor but still noticeable."

Acroricnus stylator aequatus, tribe Cryptini,
identified to species level

Classifying the members of the biological world into various taxa reflects the desire of human beings to group the great diversity of living and extinct organisms into natural categories. The organizational level TRIBE comes in handy for complex families like Ichneumonidae.

Ichneumon annulatorius, tribe Ichneumonini

When a wasp is this conspicuously marked it can usually be assigned at least as far as one of the ichneumonid tribes. However a very similar photo I submitted for identification failed to show the wing venation pattern as clearly, so genus and species confirmation were withheld by BugGuide experts.

Ichneumonids generate names among taxonomists as colorful as their appearance and life histories. Some of the lexicon is drawn from classical myth and language. Ichneumon annulatorius, pictured above, means "The Canceller." Other species in my local gallery are termed obstinator (besieger), paratus (ready), inquisitorius (investigator), ultimus (final).

Wasps in the Order of Things

 

Sphex ichneumoneus, Great Golden Digger Wasp, Sphecidae

In the previous posting we looked at the derivation of bees from the wasp family Crabrondidae. All these insects are classified within the order Hymenoptera which are distinguished by the ability to join their hindwings to their forewings by tiny hooks, for flight efficiency. Two other types (sub-orders) of insects complete the order Hymenoptera: the sawflies and the ants.

A sawfly in the family Argidae 

Sawflies can be considered thick-bodied wasps, lacking the narrow waist that is characteristic of all the other hymenoptera members.

An ant in the Formica fusca group, Formicidae

You might not think of pedestrian ants as being close relatives of the other hymenoptera. Their anatomical similarity is best seen in the winged stage.

Crematogaster cerasi, Acrobat Ants, Formicidae

Ants develop wings in preparation for flight migration to a new nesting colony.

Chalcidoid Wasp, Torymidae on a goldenrod bud

At least 100,000 species of wasps have been described worldwide, many quite tiny like this one that measures less than an eighth of an inch in length.

A Carrot Wasp, Gasteruptiidae on a goldenrod flower

The wasps in this and the previous photo have prominent ovipositors for inserting eggs into a particular medium for development. Most adult wasps forage on flower nectar but play a lesser role in pollination because, unlike bees, they lack hairs on their legs for transporting pollen back to their nests while simultaneously cross-fertilizing the flowers‒the grand bargain.

Agenioideus Spider Wasp, Pompilidae

Juvenile wasps are carnivorous. Adults provide these young with captured prey, or insert their eggs into living, paralyzed insects as their nutritional source. The Pompilidae wasps specialize in provisioning their nests with spiders.

A Cuckoo Wasp, Chrysididae

Many of the pretty cuckoo or jewel wasps are kleptoparasites, meaning they lay their eggs in the nests of other wasp species to exploit their parental care. Most such species attack hosts that provide provisions for their immature stages (such as paralyzed prey items), and they either consume the provisions intended for the host larva, or wait for the host to develop and then consume it before it reaches adulthood.

Dolichovespula maculata, Bald-faced Hornet, Vespidae

The wasps you're most likely to see at Halibut Point are conspicuously patterned, as a warning of their stinging potential and unpalatability. Many other types of insects have evolved mimicking coloration for their own defense. To date I've photographed 85 species of wasps in the Park and its surroundings.

The Origin of Bees

Scientists have concluded that all the world's bees evolved from the wasp family Crabronidae, or from their common ancestor. They put the major divergence at over 100 million years ago, which would seem to give ample time for defining characteristics to come and go, especially considering the spectacularly recent, tiny, and complex epoch of human development.

The photos below portray contemporary members of the Crabronidae family at Halibut Point.

Sand Wasp, Clitemnestra bipunctata, with prey

The bees' waspy ancestors (and their current wasp cousins) are predatory. They provide animals, generally other insects, for their young to eat.

Aphid Wasp of the tribe Psenini, with prey

These provisions are often in the form of paralyzed prey for consumption by the larvae in the nest, or as eggs inserted into a living caterpillar to develop at the host's expense and eventual demise.

Beewolf, Philanthus bilunatus

Those carnivorous proteins are necessary for the development of the newborn stage. Meanwhile the diet of adult wasps is generally vegetarian.

Jewel Beetle Wasp, Cerceris fumipennis

Bees, on the other hand, are entirely vegetarian. They switched to feeding their babies plant pollen. It's easy to find and it doesn't fight back. Pollen is rich in proteins, amino acids, and fats, with some carbohydrates included as well. The bulk of their carbohydrate needs for fuel comes from flower nectar, which may be converted to and stored as honey.

American Sand Wasp, Bembix americana

Pollen also happens to be the flower's equivalent of sperm, setting up a fine opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship. Plants are immobile, which complicates their sex life a bit. To mix up their DNA and avoid inbreeding, plants need to move that pollen around. For much of their history since colonizing the land, wind has been the primary dispersing agent of pollen. Plenty of plants such as grasses and pine trees still do it that way. 

Astata unicolor wasp of the Crabronidae family
nectaring on smartweed flowers

In our present era somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety percent of all flowering plants are thought to receive pollination services from animals ranging from lemurs, bats, and birds to moths, beetles, and flies. But it is bees that have evolved to be the star pollinators. They didn't just happen on a ready-made botanical world. Flowers as we know them, and much of our agriculturally-based diet, owe their form and existence to collaboration with bees.