Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Southern Yellowjacket

Upon returning house final Thursday, I observed the silhouette of what I believed was a paper wasp on the within of one of many storage home windows. It turned out to be one thing extra thrilling than that. Right here in japanese Kansas, it’s the time when feminine social wasps of all kinds are founding new colonies, or at the very least searching for a spot to arrange housekeeping. This particular person is not any exception, however she additionally has a devious different technique she will use.

I gently captured the wasp in a plastic vial. In higher gentle she was immediately recognizable as a queen of the Southern Yellowjacket, Vespula squamosa. This species is just not fairly as frequent as different species in japanese North America, so it was good to have an opportunity to see one up shut and at last get some respectable photos of these muted ochre and yellow colours. As stunning as these wasps are, their biology is much more fascinating and considerably scary.

Southern Yellowjacket is usually an “inquiline,” a facultative social parasite of different yellowjacket species, specifically the Japanese Yellowjacket, Vespula maculifrons, but in addition the Widow Yellowjacket, Vespula vidua. That’s to say that whereas Southern Yellowjacket can exist like every regular, free-living yellowjacket species with a queen, employee caste, and males and new queens on the finish of the colony life cycle, it could possibly additionally hijack the colony of one other species for its personal advantage of free labor. Conversely, an obligate social parasite can not exist by itself. It should efficiently usurp a number nest. Obligate social parasites don’t have any employee caste, solely queens and males (within the case of yellowjackets).

Competitors for optimum, hid nesting websites could be eager, so social parasitism could have developed as one solution to resolve this drawback. Japanese Yellowjackets sometimes nest in deserted rodent burrows and comparable cavities, however they’ll additionally nest in wall voids of human constructions. It’s telling that colonies of this species in disturbed habitats and concrete and suburban areas seem like essentially the most susceptible to being taken over by Southern Yellowjacket.

The Southern queen sometimes invades an embryonic nest of its host, dominating, evicting, or killing the resident queen. There could or might not be any host employees on the outset, however ultimately the nest is transformed fully to Southern Yellowjacket employees. Proof of the host stays within the differing structure of the nest. Southern Yellowjacket is a considerably bigger insect than Japanese Yellowjacket, so the cells within the paper combs of the nest differ accordingly.

A mature nest of Southern Yellowjacket, persisting into late autumn, could include a mean of 5,000 cells. That’s lots of wasps! Southern Yellowjacket is just not inherently extra aggressive than most different yellowjacket species in protection of their nest, however extra employees means a higher response to disturbance. It’s possible you’ll wish to examine your yard rigorously earlier than utilizing any powered instruments that would trigger vibrations and spark a yellowjacket offensive.

Southern Yellowjacket ranges from the Nice Lakes to the Atlantic coast south of New England, to Florida, and west to Iowa, Kansas, and most of japanese Texas. It additionally happens in southern Mexico and Guatemala, making it fairly actually our southernmost species of yellowjacket.

Sources: Akre, R.D., A. Greene, J.F. MacDonald, P.J. Landolt, and H.G. Davis. 1980. Yellowjackets of America North of Mexico. U.S. Division of Agriculture, Agricultural Handbook No. 552, 102 pp.
Kratzer, Chris Alice. 2022. The Social Wasps of North America. Frenchtown, New Jersey: Owlfly Publishing, LLC. 417 pp.