Vespa simillima Smith, 1868

Bass, Amber, Needham, Karen & Bennett, Andrew M. R., 2022, First record of Vespa crabro Linnaeus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) in western North America with a review of recorded species of Vespa Linnaeus in Canada, Zootaxa 5154 (3), pp. 305-318 : 310

Vespa simillima Smith

Fig. 4

The specimen identified as Vespa simillima ( Fig. 4 ) was re-confirmed morphologically using the key of Smith-Pardo et al. (2020). Both primer pairs were successful in amplifying the COI gene, resulting in a 596 bp assembled sequence (GenBank Accession OL702714 ). A GenBank BLAST found this sequence was 99.83% identical (one base pair different) to a Vespa simillima specimen from South Korea (Accession KY172037 ), with an E value of 0.0 and bit-score of 1096. Including the Canadian specimen, there are 28 sequences of V. simillima in the BOLD database from South Korea (16), Japan (9), Russia: Primorsky Krai (1) and one of unstated country ( KF933080 ) published in Perrard et al. (2013) that was collected in Japan (Perrard, pers. comm.). All sequences are grouped in a single BIN (ACB8610) with a maximum sequence divergence between species of 1.77%.

Material examined: CANADA: 1 ♀, British Columbia, Shawnigan Lake , viii.1977, collected live, A. Rumsby, ENT991-24452 ( RBCM) ( Fig. 4 ) ; JAPAN: 2 ♀, Hokkaido, Tomakomai , 25.viii.1983, M. Ito ( CNC) .

Distribution: Southeast Asia including Myanmar, parts of China, eastern Russia, Korea, and Japan, adventive in northwest Nearctic ( Cannings 1989).

Diagnosis: Vespa simillima can be distinguished from other Vespa species that have been recorded in Canada by a combination of the following characters: 1) length of gena less than 1.6× length of eye at midheight in lateral view ( Fig. 4B ), 2) pretegular carina incomplete, not spanning the height of the pronotal lobe, 3) female clypeus with punctures medially shallow, separated by one puncture diameter or more ( Fig. 4C ); 4) male metasomal sterna 6–7 with posterior margin deeply emarginate medially.

Figures

FIGURE 4. Vespa simillima specimen collected at Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia, Canada. A. Dorsal habitus. B. Lateral habitus. C. Anterior view of head. D. Fore wings. Scale bars: 1 mm. Pt = pterostigma. Dashed line in D is the prestigma.