Abstract
Polistes paper wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) are a species-rich group of social insects. Researchers have noted a wide diversity in facial color patterns among species, and for several Polistes species, intraspecific variation in facial color patterns has been linked to signals of quality or individual identity. However, there have been no systematic descriptions of facial color pattern variation across the Polistes genera, limiting our understanding of the frequency of facial color patterns, how unique patterns are among species, and the degree of variation in facial color pattern within species. I photographed pinned museum specimens under visible and ultraviolet (UV) light. Additional photos from iNaturalist, a database of citizen scientist images, were included for underrepresented species resulting in a final dataset of 1695 images from 131 species. For each species, I provide an image of a representative female face, as well as information on intraspecific variation in female facial color patterns, and sexual dimorphism of facial color patterns, when available. Facial color patterns were common across species and were composed of a mixture of yellow, red-brown, and black pigments. Patterns were similar in visible and UV images. Spectral sensitivity curves for yellow, red-brown, and black pigmented regions have a similar shape for all Polistes species measured. Males frequently had yellow faces, and yellow male faces were correlated with sexual dimorphism. Intraspecific variation in female faces was common. Descriptions of facial color variation in Polistes will be vital to study the mechanisms driving interspecific and intraspecific diversity.
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Data Availability
All images are available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8sf7m0css.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Cornell University Insect Collection (CUIC), the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the University of Guelph Insect Collection for use of specimens. I also thank S. Brady, J. Dombroskie, A. Guidotti, H. Harris, and S. Paiero for their assistance accessing collections. I am grateful to MCZbase at Harvard University and the Muséum National D’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris for making photographs of their Polistes specimens available online. James Tumulty, Michael Sheehan, and two anonymous reviewers provided invaluable discussion and comments on this manuscript. I thank Mingzi Xu for the use of her spectrophotometer, Eshan Mehrotra for assistance collecting spectral measurements, and Sabrina Liew for help with photography.
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This work was funded by National Science Foundation Grant DBI-1711703 to SEM and DEB-1750394.
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Miller, S.E. Facial color diversity of Polistes paper wasps. Insect. Soc. 70, 181–190 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-023-00904-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-023-00904-9