The Neotropical Region harbors high biodiversity and many studies on mammals, reptiles, amphibians and avifauna have investigated the causes for this pattern. However, there is a paucity of such studies that focus on Neotropical insect groups. Synoeca de Saussure, 1852 is a Neotropical swarm-founding social wasp genus with five described species that is broadly and conspicuously distributed thr...

Actinomycetes-a group of antimicrobial producing bacteria-have been successfully cultured and characterized from the nest material of diverse arthropods. Some are symbionts that produce antimicrobial chemicals found to protect nest brood and resources from pathogenic microbes. Others have no known fitness relationship with their associated insects, but have been found to produce antimicrobials ...

A taxonomic study on the solitary wasps in the vespid genus Anterhynchium de Saussure, 1863, from Vietnam is presented. One species previously identified as A. (Anterhynchium) abdominale abdominale (Illiger, 1802) is described as new, namely A. punctatum Nguyen, sp. nov. Antechynchium (Dirhynchium) flavolineatum flavolineatum (Smith, 1857) and A. (Dirhynchium) flavomarginatum flavomarginatum (S...

Sphaerularia vespae sp. nov., an endoparasite of a common Japanese hornet, Vespa simillima is described from Hokkaido, Japan, and its molecular sequence profiles are given. This newly discovered nematode appears to belong to the genus Sphaerularia, judging from its characteristic parasitic form, the uterium, which looks like a sausage with many verrucae on its surface. Sphaerularia vespae sp. n...

Vespula germanica (F.) (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) is a highly invasive social wasp that exhibits a rich behavioral repertoire in which learning and memory play a fundamental role in foraging. The learning abilities of these wasps were analyzed while relocating a food source and whether V. germanica foragers are capable of discriminating between different orientation patterns and generalizing their...

2 Institute of Ecology, Nature Research Centre, Akademijos 2, LT-08412 Vilnius, Lithuania Solitary cavity-nesting Hymenoptera constitute a group of important bioindicators of terrestrial habitats. Some of them, like caterpillar-hunting potter wasp Ancistrocerus trifasciatus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae), are quite abundant in both continuous and fragmented habitats and might be a promising...