Polistes fuscatus, whose common name is the dark or northern paper wasp, is widely found in eastern North America, from southern Canada through the southern United States. It often nests around human development. However, it greatly prefers areas in which wood is readily available for use as nest material, therefore they are also found near and in woodlands and savannas. P. fuscatus is a social wasp that is part of a complex society based around a single dominant foundress along with other cofoundresses and a dominance hierarchy.
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👉 Polistes fuscatus in the context of Vespidae
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. 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, while others are notable predators of pest insect species, and a few species are invasive pests.
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.
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Polistes fuscatus in the context of Polistinae
The Polistinae is a subfamily of eusocial wasps belonging to the family Vespidae. They are closely related to the wasps (“yellowjackets” as they are called in North America) and true hornets of the subfamily Vespinae, containing four tribes. With about 1,100 species total, it is the second-most diverse subfamily within the Vespidae, and while most species are tropical or subtropical, they include some of the most frequently encountered large wasps in temperate regions.
The English common name for Polistinae is paper wasp. Many polistines, such as Polistes fuscatus, Polistes annularis, and Polistes exclamans, make their nests out of paper. Despite being called paper wasps, other wasps (including the wasps in the subfamily Vespinae) also build nests out of paper. Additionally, some epiponine wasps (such as Polybia emaciata) build their nests out of mud despite being Polistinae.