34 
Psyche 
[March 
COLORATION IN POLISTES PALLIPES. 
By! Phil Rau, 
Kirkwood, Mo. 
A careful examination of a half-dozen cedar trees re- 
vealed four small, partly disintegrated nests of P. pallipes 
and only one new nest which contained living adult wasps. 
This nest was well protected by the close foliage. The entire 
family was taken. All the cells of the nest were empty, 
showing, of course, that all of the occupants had emerged. 
Furthermore, there were no partly constructed cells, an in- 
dication that pulp gathering as well as egg laying stops 
long before the cold weather begins ; at least in this nest the 
wasps had not gone on blindly making cells when the cold 
would have cut short the life of the young. 
The nest was of the usual round type, and had 106 cells 
with 59 adult wasps upon it. All of the cells appeared to 
have been used but once. The population comprised 23 
males, 28 workers and 8 females. The latter were larger in 
size and were therefore believed to be queens. That con- 
viction was sufficintly strong to warrant the heading “Color- 
ation in Polistes ,” for if these queens had not been present, 
I certainly should have identified all the others in the colony 
as P. variatus; the queens only were typical P. pallipes. 
This entire colony of 59 wasps was taken just because it 
contained what I thought were two distinct species (accord- 
ing to the taxonomists). At first sight one would say this 
was a mixed colony, probably the result of its having been 
founded by two queens of the respective species, except for 
three reasons : 
1. We already know the antagonism between these 
species. 1 
2. We often find the males of P. pallipes abundantly 
marked in yellow so that they resemble variatus. 
x Paper in course of publication. 
