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The Behavior Patterns of Solitary Wasps

1966; Annual Reviews; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1146/annurev.en.11.010166.001011

1545-4487

Howard E. Evans,

Insect and Pesticide Research

Some of the more conspicuous features of wasp behavior were reported more than two centuries ago, but it was not until the publication of the first volume of Fabre's Souvenirs Entomotogiques in 1879 (66) that the attractive­ ness of this field of investigation became widely apparent. The classic work of Fabre and those of Ferton (68), Adlerz (1), G. W. & E. G. Peckham (159), and P. & N. Rau (173) are widely known and have provided a broad founda­ tion for the natural history of wasps. More recently, the influence of the European school of ethologists, exemplified particularly by Tinbergen and Baerends, has been strongly felt. In a sense, the modern era of wasp ethology may be said to have begun with Baerends' extended study of Ammophila pubescens Curtis in 1941 (5) and with Iwata's Comparative Studies on the Habits of Solitary Wasps in 1942 (88), for both of these papers have had an important impact on research in this field in the past 25 years. These two papers are accepted as points of departure for the present review; these and other papers cited below contain bibliographies which collectively cover much of the very extensive literature in this field. I have omitted mention of many strictly descriptive studies, not because these are unimportant as contributing to the comparative ethology of wasps, but simply because a very large volume would be needed to survey this field fully. Attention will here be directed to behavior patterns common to all solitary wasps (more especially to fossorial species) and to some of the important questions being asked about them by contemporary workers. I have omitted consideration of wasps parasitic upon other wasps, including both parasitoids (such as M utillidae) and cleptoparasites (c1epto­ bionts, arbeitsparasiten) [such as Evagetes and Ceropales in the Pompilidae, Nysson and Stizoides in the Sphecidae (30, 37, 63, 73, 156, 220)]. Solitary wasps are defined as species in which there is no cooperation involving divis­ ion of labor between mothers and daughters or between females of the same gener ation. All social wasps belong to a portion of the superfamily Vespoidea, to the family Vespidae as defined by Richards (177); he regards the social wasps as probably monophyletic, although this opinion has not been univer­ sally accepted in the past. The nonparasitic solitary wasps considered here belong to seven families commonly placed in five superfamilies, as follows: Bethyloidea: Bethylidae; Scolioidea: Tiphiidae, Scoliidae; Vespoidea: