Take a behind-the-scenes tour of the world's largest collection of wasp
nests with James M. Carpenter, entomologist and curator in the Museum's
Division of Invertebrate Zoology. The Museum's Hymenoptera collection
includes more than 1,200 paper nests made by social wasps, as well as
the 7.5 million-specimen gall wasp collection donated to the Museum in
1958 by the widow of Alfred C. Kinsey.
The primary focus of Dr.
Carpenter's work is the wasp family Vespidae, a group of nearly 5,000
described species that encompasses the most sophisticated societies
among the social wasps, i.e., ones that build large, communal nests.
(Gall wasps, by contrast, are solitary; they lay their eggs, fly away,
and never have contact with their offspring again.) Carpenter's special
concentration is on the commonly known yellowjackets and hornets.
The
Hymenoptera are a large order of insects that includes bees, wasps and
ants. The group features more than 115,000 described species, as much as
10% of the described species diversity of the planet. Economically and
ecologically, Hymenoptera are one of the most important groups of taxa.
Wasps
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Behind-the-scenes tour of the world's largest collection of wasp nests
English
Read time: 1 minSubmitted by Emanuela Clavarino on 14 July, 2011 - 10:01American Museum of Natural History
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