Wasp Wednesday: Western Yellowjacket

Notorious. That describes the Western Yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica (and yes, the species name is spelled correctly). I recall this social wasp from my childhood in Portland, Oregon where it was a constant presence at picnics, barbecues, and garbage cans at the zoo and every other urban park. Here in Colorado Springs they are equally pestiferous, and persist deep into the fall.

Each year, the Western Yellowjacket colony cycle begins with queens searching for nesting sites. These females are larger, and more yellow in color than the worker caste. They typically emerge from their winter hibernacula sometime between March and April, though it may take awhile for a queen to find a suitable subterranean niche where she can start building her nest. I imaged the queen below at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo on July 9, 2011, so she still had no help from workers in constructing her nest.

Once the queen’s worker offspring can contribute, the colony and nest quickly expand in size. Mature nests, based on records from Pullman, Washington and La Grande, Oregon, can exceed a population of 2,000 workers (average about 1,800) and contain 4,000 cells or more in the paper combs.

Nests are usually located in abandoned rodent burrows ten to fifteen centimeters below the surface of the soil, with entrance tunnels ten to thirty centimeters long. There is often a mud turret surrounding the entrance hole. Look for yellowjackets coming and going from the same spot to locate a nest entrance. You can approach closely to watch their activity without arousing the occupants, but run a lawnmower over the nest and watch out! One of my elementary school science teachers told me he once drove a stake right through a nest. That could not have been a pleasant experience.

Western Yellowjackets are best known for their aggressive scavenging behavior. They have to secure large quantities of protein to feed the larvae in the nest, and the workers take that job seriously. It is much easier to haul away a chunk of your tuna sandwich, chicken leg, or burger than it is to go kill a series of small insects. Still, this species does its fair share of scavenging road kill and preying on true bugs, spiders, flies, grasshoppers, even slugs.

The adult wasps need carbohydrates to fuel their active lifestyle, so that is why they crawl into your soda can. Normally, in nature, they prefer the sweet waste products secreted by aphids and scale insects. This “honeydew” is like the Nectar of the Gods to social wasps. Last week I imaged several workers lapping up the honeydew of Cinara conifer aphids on a pine tree at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

The last chapter in the annual colony life cycle is the production of new queens and males. These reproductives are liberated at the end of the season and they fly out to find mates from other colonies. The males, with their long abdomens and antennae, seem to congregate around the tops of small trees where they perch to await passing females. The males may dislodge each other from prime lookout posts, but they don’t have stingers and such squabbles are therefore not life-threatening.

Western Yellowjackets can be “bad” some years, with much higher than normal population densities. This usually occurs when a warm, dry spring season allows queens to get a head start on establishing colonies. The result can be worker wasps wreaking havoc on fruit tree orchards, logging camps, and outdoor recreation destinations later in the summer.

The Western Yellowjacket is exactly that: a western North American species ranging from southern British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan south through the Pacific coast and Rocky Mountain States, all the way to Arizona and New Mexico at higher elevations. There are scattered records across the northern Midwest as far east as Michigan; and this species has been introduced to Hawaii as well.

Source:Akre, Roger D., Albert Greene, et al. 1981. The Yellowjackets of America North of Mexico. Washington, DC: USDA Agriculture Handbook Number 552. 102 pp.

Spider Sunday: Triangle Spiders

The following is a “reprint” of a blog entry for September 10, 2009.

An outing to the Westfield River in Hampshire County, Massachusetts last Sunday, September 6, included a stop at the Knightville Dam, where a unique arachnid awaited my discovery. There, among the goldenrods, asters, and ornamental black locust trees I found two triangle spiders, named for the shape of their web: a triangle that is essentially the sector of an orb web. The reduced size of the snare is just one puzzling feature of these amazing spiders.

Triangle spiders belong to the genus Hyptiotes (pronounced Hip-tee-OH-teez) in the obscure family Uloboridae. They are part of a larger group of arachnids called “cribellate spiders.” Cribellate spiders all share one feature in common: an extra spinning organ called a cribellum, located adjacent to the normal group of spinnerets. The cribellum issues a special type of silk that the spider literally “fluffs up” using a comb-like organ called a calamistrum, located on each hind leg.

Perhaps even more amazing than the “accessories” that uloborids have is what they lack. These are the only spiders in North America that do not have venom glands. That’s right, they are non-venomous spiders. So, you ask, how then do they subdue their prey? That is a great question for which I have not the foggiest answer. They probably do an extra-good job of wrapping their prey in silk, but not just any silk.

The cribellate silk threads in the part of the web designed to trap insects is not sticky like you would expect. Instead, it is tangled, and this is apparently just as effective as little droplets of glue.

Once it has erected its snare, the triangle spider sits on the thread near the tip of the twig or grass stem to which the apex of the triangle is secured. Depending on which book or article you believe, the spider either bridges a gap in this anchor thread, or simply perches there and reels in the slack line to render it taut. When a prey insect impacts the web, the spider then instantly releases the anchor thread, causing the web to rebound, further entangling the prey.

This feat of engineering and strength is performed by a very small animal. Even an adult female Hyptiotes is only 3-4 millimeters long. Males are 2-3 millimeters at maturity. Simply spotting one of these spiders is cause for self-congratulations for any naturalist.

There are four species of Hyptiotes in North America, three of which are chiefly western in their geographic distribution. The one shown in the image here is Hyptiotes cavatus, the sole eastern species.

Keep a sharp eye out for triangle spiders. The webs are mostly built about waist-high in weeds, on bridges and other structures, and twigs of trees and shrubs.

Wasp Wednesday: Prairie Yellowjacket

Arriving in Colorado Springs in early October, I was not optimistic that I would find many, if any, wasps still active in the chilling air. Much to my surprise there are still some on the wing, even at high altitudes. Monday, October 10, Heidi and I traveled up into the Front Range to Cripple Creek and the surrounding area. There, walking around on the snow, I found a male Prairie Yellowjacket, Vespula atropilosa.

Heidi remarked that she thought the Western Yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica was the only species of that genus living in the area. Actually, there are six species total known from Colorado. Yellowjackets could be considered mostly boreal in their distribution patterns, ranging south at higher elevations where the climate resembles that of higher latitudes.

This particular specimen could have been blown up to its 9,000 foot or so location, too. The colonies of V. atropilosa tend to be smaller than those of more “urban” species, and usually decline earlier in the season, too, so I was somewhat surprised to see this one.

This male exemplifies the yellow or “xanthic” phase of this species. They also come in a black or “melanic” phase that is more black than yellow, as shown in the diagram below from Roger D. Akre’s The Yellowjackets of America North of Mexico (USDA Agriculture Handbook No. 552, 1981), and another specimen I imaged on October 13 in Colorado Springs.

The Prairie Yellowjacket nests preferentially in abandoned rodent burrows. Nests have also been discovered in tree hollows, under steps, and between the walls of houses. One truly aerial nest was found in Pullman, Washington, but this is decidedly an anomaly. The paper combs are surrounded by layers of “envelope,” typically rather coarse as is the case in most subterranean yellowjacket species. V. atropilosa nests are dirtier than most, with the bodies of deceased wasps and other debris incorporated into the paper envelope.

The greatest number of workers in any of the nests studied by Dr. Akre and his colleagues was 504. These are not your picnic-harassing, garbage-gathering yellowjackets, either. They have retained their predatory nature and hunt mostly spiders, harvestmen, flies, insect larvae, and true bugs as food for the larvae back in the nest. Adults feed on aphid honeydew and flower nectar to fuel their flight.

The Prairie Yellowjacket is restricted to western North America, ranging from central British Columbia south and east through southern Alberta, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, western Montana, Wyoming, Utah, most of Colorado, and northern New Mexico and Arizona. It avoids nesting in truly urban locations in my experience, though nests in yards are apparently not uncommon.

I look forward to finding more interesting yellowjacket species here in the Rocky Mountains, and I reserve the right to revisit this particular species in future blog posts.

Spider Sunday: Arachtober, 2011

It seems like only yesterday that I announced the annual Flickr photo group ”Arachtober” at my other blog, Sense of Misplaced. Well, it is that time of year again, and this year’s edition of the online event is poised to be the best ever.

One needs to have a Flickr account to join the Arachtober group. Then, you must be approved by the group administrator, though this is usually only a formality. Right now, group members can only post one image of a spider, scorpion, or other arachnid per day. Later in the month the limit will increase. The images you contribute should not be ones posted to your Flickr page in previous months.

The fact that Arachtober falls in the same month as Halloween is no coincidence, but the goal of Arachtober is to celebrate the diversity, beauty, and positive impact of our arachnid friends. It is a perfect antidote to haunted house cobwebs and scary fake spider decorations.

Once again I encourage all my arthropod-loving photographer friends to share their favorite images with an audience of other arachnophiles. Please see the above link to my original post for more information on the origin of the event. Thank you.