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They are a successful and diverse group of insects with tens of thousands of described species; wasps have spread to all parts of the world except for the polar regions. The largest social wasp is the Asian giant hornet , at up to 5 centimetres (2.0 in) in length; among the largest solitary wasps is a group of species known as tarantula hawks ...
Palaeovespa florissantia, late Eocene. The Vespidae are a large (nearly 5000 species), diverse, cosmopolitan family of wasps, including nearly all the known eusocial wasps (such as Polistes fuscatus, Vespa orientalis, and Vespula germanica) and many solitary wasps. [1]
V. germanica wasps have a diverse diet. They are known to eat carrion, live arthropods (including spiders [12]), fruit, [10] honeydew, and processed human food and garbage. [13] They are opportunistic scavengers and hunters able to obtain food from a variety of different sources. [9]
Vespula vulgaris, known as the common wasp, is a species found in regions that include the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, India, China, New Zealand [1] and Australia. It is sometimes known in English as the European wasp, but the same name is used for the species Vespula germanica or German wasp.
Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids , they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods , sooner or later causing the death of these hosts .
Apocrita (wasps, bees and ants) Hymenoptera is a large order of insects , comprising the sawflies , wasps , bees , and ants . Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, [ 2 ] [ 3 ] in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. [ 4 ]
The extinct family of Armaniidae also was formerly considered to be a group of "ant-like wasps" and was also classified under Vespoidea. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] However, additional work by Borysenko in 2017 found these species to be basal members of Formicidae , placing three genera under Sphecomyrminae and considering the rest incertae sedis .
Sphex pensylvanicus is a large, black wasp, significantly larger than their congener Sphex ichneumoneus (the great golden digger wasp). [6] Males are smaller than females, at only 19–28 mm (0.7–1.1 in) long compared with typical female sizes of 25–34 mm (1.0–1.3 in). [2]