Polistinae

The Polistinae is a subfamily of eusocial wasps belonging to the family Vespidae. They are closely related to the yellowjackets and true hornets of the subfamily Vespinae and are divided into 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.

Polistinae

Muhammad Mahdi Karim ( www.micro2macro.net ) · GFDL 1.2 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
VespidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 58 million years on record.

The record covers at least 59.24 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 61.66 Mya to 129 ka.

Paleocene — about 1 of 15 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 6 of 15 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 3 of 15 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 4 of 15 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 15 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 15 occurrences63–61 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences61–59 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 3 occurrences36–34 Mya — about 3 occurrences34–31 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences31–29 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences29–27 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences27–25 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences25–23 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences23–21 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences21–19 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences19–17 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 1 occurrence13–10 Mya — about 2 occurrences2.1–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence59.24 Mya774 ka63 Mya0 Mya

15 occurrences of Polistinae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

15 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

8 formations

Upper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°ECampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EMonteils — 44.09°N, 4.18°EMost — 50.57°N, 13.73°EMiyajima — 36.98°N, 139.82°E

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The named rock units Polistinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Polistinae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Polistinae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

1,088 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Polistinae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

12 references

Each of the 15 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Polistinae

Credit
Muhammad Mahdi Karim ( www.micro2macro.net )
Licence
GFDL 1.2
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Polistinae was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itVespidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau 1835)