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Tropical Paper Wasp

Polistes stigma

Photo by JoeHartman
Published on Project Noah
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Field Notes

Description:

A very interesting observation I could carry out in my wild garden, when they decided to use a succulent plant's spike to hang their nest on. Nests are built of chewed plant material, have multiple rooms and after laying one egg in each room, plus chewed caterpillar as food, they close each chamber. It started with four wasps, hence my macro shots, but later there were about 20 of them, some a bit aggressive, defending the nest, so that kept me on distance, using a tele to get the shots of the extended nest.
Males have one band on the last part of the abdomen, females have two. The females also have brown eyes whereas the males have black eyes.
The time between the first photo and the last (L to R) is six weeks

Habitat:

Wild garden

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (11)

Great sequence!! Very informative and artistic shots! Good work, Joe!
Fantastic series! Very well shot!!
Thank you Marta. As it is opposite my house I tried to get a complete documentation, as I was lucky enough to see the start: a very small nest. Now it's a multistory building and a lot of young stuff will come out. I had never seen eggs of wasps anyway, also the chewing of plant material is a joy to witness.
Excellent series! I love the image that shows the eggs. This spotting shows us a variety of activities of these wasps..very well done!
Photographed
PublishedOctober 12, 2013

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