noun
definition
A member of the dominant American upper-class culture: a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
definition
A member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
noun
definition
Any of many types of stinging flying insect resembling a hornet.
definition
Any of the members of suborder Apocrita, excepting the ants (family Formicidae) and bees (clade Anthophila).
definition
A person who behaves in an angry or insolent way, hence waspish.
Examples of wasps in a Sentence
The poison-glands of the sting in wasps and bees are well-known examples of these.
Hornets, bees and wasps of many varieties abound.
Such " workers " are essential to the formation of a social community of Hymenoptera, and their wingless condition among the ants shows that their specialization has been carried further in this family than among the wasps and bees.
It is noteworthy, however, that although the manner in which the prey is stung (for example) is on the whole similar in the case of the members of any given species - that is to say, all the wasps of the species behave in very much the same manner - yet there are minor variations in detail.
These are very simple, open and generally regular flowers, white, greenish-yellow or yellow in colour and are chiefly visited by insects with a short proboscis, such as short-tongued wasps and flies, also beetles and more rarely bees.
Ants form a distinct and natural family (Formicidae) of the great order Hymenoptera, to which bees, wasps and sawflies also belong.
Further, while among wasps and bees we find some solitary and some social genera, the ants as a family are social, though some FIG.
Paired erectile plates (patagia) are borne on the prothorax in moths, while in moths, sawflies, wasps, bees and other insects there are small plates (tegulae) - see Fig.
The offspring of the virgin females are in most of these instances females; but among the bees and wasps parthenogenesis occurs normally and always results in the development of males, the " queen " insect laying either a fertilized or unfertilized egg at will.
His classification was founded mainly on the nature of the wings, and five of his orders - the Hymenoptera (bees, ants, wasps, &c.), Coleoptera (beetles), Diptera (two-winged flies), Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), and Hemiptera (bugs, cicads, &c.) - are recognized to-day with nearly the same limits as he laid down.
Now the Pompilidae or mason wasps provision their cells with insects of many different kinds, as well as with spiders; but, of the hundreds of species of these wasps that have been described from different parts of the world, only one is known to use ants for this purpose; and this species is not one that preys upon spiders.
Furthermore, the observations on American wasps render it probable that the earlier accounts of the instinctive behaviour of such wasps are exaggerated.
But the Peckhams' careful observations and experiments show that, with the American wasps, the victims stored in the nests are quite as often dead as alive; that those which are only paralysed live for a varying number of days, some more, some less; that wasp larvae thrive just as well on dead victims, sometimes dried up, sometimes undergoing decomposition, as on living and paralysed prey; that the nerve-centres are not stung with the supposed uniformity; and that in some cases paralysis, in others death, follows when the victims are stung in parts far removed from any nerve-centre.
Wasps, bees and hornets, generically known as hachi, differ little from their European types, except that they are somewhat larger and more sluggish.
The second (so-called " first ") abdominal segment is often very constricted, forming the " waist " so characteristic of wasps and ants for example.
The sting of wasps, ants and bees is a modified ovipositor and is used for egg-laying by the fertile females, as well as for defence.
Thus we find throughout the order a degree of care for offspring unreached by other insects, and this family-life has, in the best known of the Hymenoptera - ants, wasps and bees - developed into an elaborate social organization.
Among the wasps the workers may only differ from the queens in size, and individuals intermediate between the two forms of female may be met with.
The feeding habits of the adult may agree with that of the larva, or differ, as in the case of wasps which feed their grubs on flies, but eat principally vegetable food themselves.
Moreover, young birds that had been taught by experience that these caterpillars are uneatable also left wasps untouched.
Nevertheless, as explained below, it seems to be highly probable that ant-imitating insects and spiders, when the resemblance is dependent to a greater extent upon size, shape and movement than upon tint, have acquired their mimetic likeness especially to protect them from the attacks of such insect-enemies as predaceous wasps of the family Pompilidae, flies of the family Asilidae, and from socalled parasitic hymenoptera of the family Ichneumonidae, as well as from other insect-eating Arthropods.
Coleoptera (beetles) supply instances of mimicry of ants, wasps and Ichneumonids, and some defenceless forms of this order mimic others that are protected.
Many of the Syrphidae are banded black and yellow and present a general resemblance to wasps, especially when they alight, the resemblance being enhanced by a twitching action of the abdomen imitating the similar action so familiar in species of stinging hymenoptera.
But it has been ascertained that the species of Volucella which behave in this manner also visit for a like purpose the nests of wasps, which they do not resemble.
Hence it is probable that no factor has had a greater influence than these wasps in moulding the protective instincts and habits of spiders.
Trochilium apiforme, crabroniforme - present to bees and wasps is effected in the main by the loss of the scales from the wings, leaving these organs transparent.
It is probable that Aesop did not commit his fables to writing; Aristophanes (Wasps, 1259) represents Philocleon as having learnt the "absurdities" of Aesop from conversation at banquets, and Socrates whiles away his time in prison by turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into verse (Plato, Phaedo, 61 b).
It is said also to dig up the nests of wasps in order to eat the larvae, as the ratel - a closely allied South African form - is said to rob the bees of their honey.
If we narrow it down to the US, the most people are killed by bees and wasps.
The true wasps have the fore-wings folded lengthwise when at rest and the fore-legs of normal build - not specialized for digging.
The Vespidae or social wasps have " queens " and " workers " like the ants, but both these forms of female are winged; the claws on their feet are simple.
In the Eumenidae or solitary wasps the female sex is undifferentiated, and the foot claws are toothed.
The eggs are laid in the nests of various bees and wasps, the chrysid larva living as a " cuckoo " parasite.
The Trigonalidae, a small family whose larvae are parasitic in wasps' nests, also probably belong here.
Among the Vespoid families of fossorial wasps, the Pornpilidae are the most important.
In this instinct we have a correspondence with the habits of social wasps and bees.
Most of the genera are " solitary " in habit, the female sex being undifferentiated; but among the humble-bees and hive-bees we find, as in social wasps and ants, the occurrence of workers, and the consequent elaboration of a wonderful insect-society.
Bees, wasps and larger insects serve as pollinating agents FIG.
In 1555 Salah Rais, pasha of Algiers, set men to work to pull it down, but the records say that the attempt was given up because big black wasps came from under the stones and stung them to death.
Insects are numerous, and of about 500 species of beetle some 80% are not known to exist elsewhere; cockroaches and green locusts are pests, as are, also, mosquitoes,' wasps, scorpions, centipedes and white ants, which have all been introduced from elsewhere.
Wasps, 642, with which he compares Plautus, Menaechmi, 279.
But the likeness probably goes deeper than superficial resemblance that appeals to the eye, for spiders which distinguish flies from bees by touch and not by sight, treat drone-flies after touching them, not in the fearless way they evince towards bluebottles (Calliphora), but in the cautious manner they display towards bees and wasps, warily refraining from coming to close quarters until their prey is securely enswathed in silk.
Kill wasps assiduously as soon as they appear.
Ants, bees and wasps of many species, and flies and gnats abound, particularly during the summer rainy season, and at all elevations.
These spiders are very much larger and more venomous than the largest of the Lycosidae, and in the Southern states of North America the species of wasps that destroy them have been called tarantula hawks.
These wasps then eat harmful cabbage aphids which may be feeding on the plants.
Other interesting subjects to study are wasps, bees, flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, and dragonflies.
And only die-hards saw Edinburgh beat Toulouse and Wasps.
Hot summer days will find the heath grasshopper and bees on the heather blossoms, and solitary wasps mining tunnels in sandy banks.
Time to get the hatchling a Wasps babygro I think.