Vespidae

The Vespidae are a large, diverse, cosmopolitan family of wasps, including nearly all the eusocial wasps 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. 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.

Vespidae

Richard Bartz , Munich aka Makro Freak · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
VespoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 119 million years on record.

The record covers at least 119.57 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 121.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 11 of 100 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 17 of 100 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 7 of 100 occurrencesEocene — about 29 of 100 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 14 of 100 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 20 of 100 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 100 occurrencesPleistocene — about 2 of 100 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 3 occurrences120–116 Mya — about 5 occurrences116–111 Mya — about 3 occurrences103–99 Mya — about 2 occurrences99–95 Mya — about 7 occurrences95–91 Mya — about 6 occurrences91–87 Mya — about 1 occurrence62–58 Mya — about 7 occurrences58–54 Mya — about 2 occurrences54–50 Mya — about 3 occurrences50–45 Mya — about 2 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 1 occurrence37–33 Mya — about 22 occurrences33–29 Mya — about 5 occurrences29–25 Mya — about 6 occurrences25–21 Mya — about 2 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 11 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 4 occurrences12–8.3 Mya — about 3 occurrences8.3–4.1 Mya — about 2 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences119.57 Mya129 ka124 Mya0 Mya

100 occurrences of Vespidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

100 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

24 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°EDzun-Bain — 45.45°N, 99.13°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WCampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°EZaza — 53.30°N, 112.09°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ECrato — 7.13°S, 39.70°WÚstí — 50.76°N, 14.24°ETranquille — 50.13°N, 120.51°WTurga — 50.83°N, 116.19°EBotchi — 47.99°N, 139.45°EGreen River — 41.55°N, 109.51°WRaritan — 40.47°N, 74.32°WMonteils — 44.09°N, 4.18°EMost — 50.57°N, 13.73°EHachiya — 35.48°N, 137.11°EArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EKlondike Mountain — 48.66°N, 118.75°WMiyajima — 36.98°N, 139.82°EMae Sot — 19.29°N, 99.63°ENingming — 22.14°N, 107.03°E

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The named rock units Vespidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 33 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Vespidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Vespidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

4,353 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 62 sites for Vespidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

51 references

Each of the 100 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. 39 further references are not listed. 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 Vespidae

Credit
Richard Bartz , Munich aka Makro Freak
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Vespidae 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 itVespoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802