Things We Don’t Know About West Indian Social Wasps

Abstract

The known social wasps of the islands of the West Indies comprise 31 independent-founding and 20 swarm-founding species. Within the region, most are found only on the continental islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The present state of our nesting-biological knowledge of these 51 species is very variable. This is summarised in tabular form as a way of drawing attention to aspects that have not yet been studied. In addition, 21 scientific problems of various magnitudes are outlined. Of these, 19 have to do with social wasps in the formal sense (Vespidae: Polistinae in our area), while the other two concern members of the family Crabronidae.