Vespidae

{{Short description|Family of insects}}

{{Automatic taxobox

| fossil_range = {{fossil range|Aptian|Recent}}

| image = Vespula germanica Horizontalview Richard Bartz.jpg

| image_caption = Vespula germanica

| taxon = Vespidae

| authority = Latreille, 1802

| subdivision_ranks = Subfamilies

| subdivision = *Eumeninae (potter wasps)

• Euparagiinae
• Gayellinae
• Masarinae (pollen wasps)
• Polistinae (paper wasp)
• Stenogastrinae (hover wasp)
• Vespinae (yellowjackets, hornets)
• Zethinae
• {{extinct}}Priorvespinae
• {{extinct}}Protovespinae

}}

File:Palaeovespa florissantia.jpg 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.{{cite journal |first1=Kurt M. |last1=Pickett |first2=John W. |last2=Wenzel |title=Phylogenetic Analysis of the New World Polistes (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Polistinae) Using Morphology and Molecules |journal=Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society |volume=77 |issue=4 |pages=742–760 |year=2004 |doi=10.2317/E-18.1 |s2cid=85737989 }} Each social wasp colony includes a queen and a number of female workers with varying degrees of sterility relative to the queen. In temperate social species, colonies usually last only one year, dying at the onset of winter. New queens and males (drones) are produced towards the end of the summer, and after mating, the queens hibernate over winter in cracks or other sheltered locations. The nests of most species are constructed out of mud, but polistines and vespines use plant fibers, chewed to form a sort of paper (also true of some stenogastrines). Many species are pollen vectors contributing to the pollination of several plants, being potential or even effective pollinators,{{cite journal |first1=R.B. |last1=Sühs |first2=A. |last2=Somavilla |first3=J. |last3=Putzke |first4=A. |last4=Köhler |title=Pollen vector wasps (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) of Schinus terebinthifolius Raddi (Anacardiaceae), Santa Cruz do Sul, RS, Brazil |journal=Brazilian Journal of Biosciences |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=138–143 |year=2009 |url=http://www.ufrgs.br/seerbio/ojs/index.php/rbb/article/view/1123}} while others are notable predators of pest insect species, and a few species are invasive pests.Beggs, Jacqueline R., Eckehard G. Brockerhoff, Juan C. Corley, Marc Kenis, Maité Masciocchi, Franck Muller, Quentin Rome, and Claire Villemant. "Ecological effects and management of invasive alien Vespidae." BioControl 56 (2011): 505-526.Beggs, J. "The ecological consequences of social wasps (Vespula spp.) invading an ecosystem that has an abundant carbohydrate resource." Biological Conservation 99, no. 1 (2001): 17-28.

The subfamilies Polistinae and Vespinae are composed solely of eusocial species, while the Eumeninae, Euparagiinae, Gayellinae, Masarinae and Zethinae are all solitary with the exception of a few communal and several subsocial species. The Stenogastrinae are facultatively eusocial, considering nests may have one or several adult females; in cases where the nest is shared by multiple females (typically, a mother and her daughters) there is reproductive division of labor and cooperative brood care.PK Piekarski, JM Carpenter, AR Lemmon, E Moriarty-Lemmon, BJ Sharanowski. (2018) Phylogenomic Evidence Overturns Current Conceptions of Social Evolution in Wasps (Vespidae). Molecular Biology and Evolution. 35:2097-2109. [https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy124 https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy124]

In the Polistinae and Vespinae, rather than consuming prey directly, prey are premasticated and fed to the larvae, which in return, produce a clear liquid (with high amino acid content) for the adults to consume; the exact amino acid composition varies considerably among species, but it is considered to contribute substantially to adult nutrition.{{cite journal |first1=J.H. |last1=Hunt |first2=I. |last2=Baker |first3=H.G. |last3=Baker |title=Similarity of amino acids in nectar and larval saliva: the nutritional basis for trophallaxis in social wasps |journal=Evolution |volume=36 |issue=6 |pages=1318–22 |year=1982 |doi=10.1111/j.1558-5646.1982.tb05501.x |pmid=28563573 |doi-access=free }}

Fossils are known since Aptian of the Early Cretaceous, with several described species from Cretaceous amber.{{Cite journal|last1=Perrard|first1=Adrien|last2=Grimaldi|first2=David|last3=Carpenter|first3=James M.|date=April 2017|title=Early lineages of Vespidae (Hymenoptera) in Cretaceous amber: Vespidae in Cretaceous amber|journal=Systematic Entomology|language=en|volume=42|issue=2|pages=379–386|doi=10.1111/syen.12222|s2cid=90328491|url=https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01587206/file/article.pdf}}