Southern yellowjacket

We have our first class observation of the southern yellowjacket (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/154562651), a species that I find endlessly fascinating! As described in the iNaturalist taxon information page for the species (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/233560-Vespula-squamosa), the southern yellowjacket (V. squamosa) is a social parasite of the earlier emerging eastern yellowjacket (V. maculifrons). A southern yellowjacket queen will take over a small eastern yellowjacket nest and put the eastern yellowjacket workers to work!

"Many annual colonies begin in late May or early June when the queen infringes on a small V. maculifrons colony (about 85% of colonies begin in this parasitic takeover, while only 15% of colonies are independent). Whereas workers do not survive the winter in annual colonies, the queen does survive, and in the spring, when she is ready to lay more eggs, she scouts for small V. maculifrons and V. vidua colonies to serve as the host colony. These “takeovers” can often be violent as evidenced by many dead queens found in the nests. This violence tends to be conspecific, meaning that multiple V. squamosa queens are fighting for control of the host nest or for control of the polygynous nest. A successful usurpation constitutes the beginning of the parasitic relationship between a V. squamosa colony and a V. maculifrons colony."

Fun fact - my lab is currently working on analyzing the first genome assemblies of V. maculifrons and V. squamosa in collaboration with the Goodisman lab at Georgia Tech!

Posted on April 13, 2023 05:19 PM by brendanhunt