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For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
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Photo#133364
Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - female

Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - Female
Sand Springs, Osage County, Oklahoma, USA
August 1, 2007
Size: 1"
Here is the Red Wasp attacking and eating the grasshopper I talked about earlier in the forum here http://bugguide.net/node/view/133256#170326.

Please confirm the ID and if you can tell if this is a male or female.

Images of this individual: tag all
Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - female Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - female Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - female Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - female Red Wasp - Polistes carolinus - Polistes - female

Moved
Moved from Red Wasp.

Questionable ID
Reading Eric's comments and the ones on the info page it sounds like this shouldn't be here but at genus level.

Moved
Moved from Polistes.

Yes
this definitly looks like polistes carolinus, female.(you can tell its a female by the antennea, and the fact that it is attacking a grasshopper. A male wouldent go hunting for prey.)

 
Just filmed one eating a Romalea
I just filmed a red wasp (Polistes carolina?) devouring one grasshopper . When I made the observation there were 17 grasshoppers in one little spot feeding on a patch of Galium spp. The very next day, I frantically searched around hoping to capture a bit more of the predation sequence. I could only find 2. I am guessing the wasp had an impressive prey capture efficiency!

 
Not so sure.
Could well be P. carolinus, but P. perplexus is identical excepting the punctation of the ocular-malar space (which can only be seen under magnification). All my specimens from Taney County, Missouri keyed out to P. perplexus, so that is why I am suspicious:-)

 
All
of the wasps that i have seen that look like this i have been IDing as P. carolinus. I had no idea that there was another species so similar. Thanks for the info!