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Polistes olivaceus Degeer

Yellow Oriental paper wasp

(Life: Kingdom: Metazoa (animals); Phylum: Arthropoda; Class: Hexapoda; Order: Hymenoptera; Superfamily: Vespoidea; Family: Vespidae; Subfamily: Polistinae; Genus: Polistes)

Polistes olivaceus Degeer, 1773. Holotype Type Locality: .


Polistes olivaceus Bandipur

Polistes olivaceus (India). Photograph by L. Shyamal, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.


Polistes olivaceus and nest under umbrella (Mauritius, -20.0841, 57.5154). Photographs © Joy Hichens.

Distribution

Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion,  Zanzibar.

Indigenous to SE Asia, introduced to Afrotropical region and many Pacific ocean islands (such as Cook Island, Easter Island, Hawaii and Marquesas Islands).

Biology

Social, constructing communal paper nests comprising a single horizontally orientated comb with downward pointing cells. Larvae are fed on chewed-up, soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars.

Reference

Bequaert, J.C. 1918. A revision of the Vespidae of the Belgian Congo based on the collection of the American Museum Congo Expedition: with a list of Ethiopian diplopterous wasps. Bulletin of the AMNH 39: 1-384.

Credits

Photograph by L. Shyamal, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photographs © Joy Hichens.

Map illustration © Simon van Noort (Iziko Museums of South Africa).


Web author Simon van Noort (Iziko South African Museum)

 

Citation: van Noort, S. 2024. WaspWeb: Hymenoptera of the World. URL: www.waspweb.org (accessed on <day/month/year>).

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