1912] Turner — An Orphan Colony of Polistes Pallipes Lepel 187 



Soon they had severed its head from the body and had begun to 

 feed upon the contents of its thorax. They had become cannibals! 

 Apparently the lack of food rich in protein was the cause. ^ 



Fearing that all of the pupae might share the fate of this one, 

 I decided to supply food containing proteids in greater abundance. 

 In my garden I captured some small caterpillars of the cabbage 

 butterfly (Pieris rupee). I picked up one that was about one inch 

 long and ofl^ered it to the wasps. One of the wasps seized it with 

 her first pair of legs. Without stinging or making any attempt to 

 do so, she proceeded at once to chew the posterior end of the 

 larva. According to Margaret Morley,^ Belt remarks: "A speci- 

 men of Polistes carnifex was hunting for caterpillars in my garden. 

 I found one about an inch long and held it out towards it on the 

 point of a stick. It seized it immediately, and commenced biting 

 it from head to tail, soon reducing the soft body to a mass of 

 pulp. It rolled up about half of it into a ball and prepared to 

 carry it off." The behavior of Polistes pallipses Lepel. was un- 

 like this. The wasp did not bite the larvae from tail to head; 

 but, holding the caterpillar with her fore feet, she rotated it on its 

 longitudinal axis and gradually elevated it while she malaxated 

 the posterior end of the squirming insect until her jaws con- 

 tained a large ball of pulpy matter. She then dropped the rest 

 of the caterpillar and flew to her nest where she fed the larvae in 

 the uncapped cells. She would place the juicy mass aganst the 

 mouth of a larva and then remove it, always leaving a portion 

 of it clinging to the mouth of the young wasp. Although several 

 of the wasps accepted the caterpillars offered, only one seemed to 

 take any part in feeding the young. A few of the wasps refused 

 to accept the caterpillars that I presented to them; but they 

 accepted such food from the jaws of other wasps. One even 

 stole food out of the mouth of one of the larvae. From now on 

 these wasps were daily supplied with insect food, and they always 

 treated the caterpillars in the manner described above. An 



* Margaret Morley, in her book on "Wasps and Their Ways," describes a case of cannibalism. 

 Speaking of a nest of wasps tliat she had captured she says: "It was necessary to keep the 

 nest shut up in a box for several days, and in that time the confined wasps, perhaps becoming 

 crazed with adversity, so far forgot themselves as to pull the larvse out of the cells and suck 

 their juices." There were numerous larvae in the nest I studied; but the wasps passed them 

 by and laboriously uncapped a cell and fed upon a pupa. 



^Op. cit., pp. 184, 185. 



