Brief Summary
provided by Catalog of Hymenoptera in America North of Mexico
Collectively, the members of this family are known as thread-waisted wasps because of the slender, elongate abdominal petiole. Most North American species are moderately large wasps, many of them with conspicuous coloration. The nesting habits are quite varied: The majority of species are digger or sand wasps, excavating their nests in soil; others utilize pre-existing cavities or borings in wood, or abandoned mud-dauber cells; a few are mud-daubers. The prey is also quite varied and includes spiders, cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, katydids and larvae of Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera. Normally, the species of a genus or higher category prey upon species of only one of the foregoing groups.
- bibliographic citation
- Catalog of Hymenoptera in America North of Mexico. 1979. Prepared cooperatively by specialists on the various groups of Hymenoptera under the direction of Karl V. Krombein and Paul D. Hurd, Jr., Smithsonian Institution, and David R. Smith and B. D. Burks, Systematic Entomology Laboratory, Insect Identification and Beneficial Insect Introduction Institute. Science and Education Administration, United States Department of Agriculture.
