Broad-banded Hopper Wolf

Appearance

9 to 13mm. This is one of several very similar wasps in the family which require a specimen or excellent macro photos to identify. The first dorsal plate is straight-sided rather than bulged and the yellow on the second dorsal plate occupies not less than 1/3 of its length. The face is largely yellow, extending above the level of the antennal insertions.

Naming

Lepeletier, 1832

Distribution

Recorded sparingly over southern England (Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Kent, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk). In the Channel Islands, found on Guernsey, Herm and Sark. Abroad, widely distributed in the western Palaearctic region, eastwards to the Kirgizian steppes and southwards to Africa (Lomholdt, 1975-1976).

Status

G. laticinctus is the rarest of this group of solitary wasps in Britain with a sparse distribution south of a line from the Wash to the Severn estuary (there is a single record from mid-Lincolnshire). Mike Edwards pointed out that there has been a spread of the species since about 1980, before which there were very few records.

Status (in Britain only)
Listed as Rare (RDB3) in Shirt (1987) and by Falk (1991). The wasp may have declined, but it appears to have habits that render it somewhat elusive - few records have been submitted to the BWARS recorder.

Behavior

Flight period
Mid-June to mid-August.

Habitat

Usually associated with rough vegetation such as brambles in open situations (heathland, scrub, coastal dunes, coastal landslips and soft rock cliffs), quarries and occasionally gardens. Typically observed running over brambles and other low herbage.

Reproduction

Females excavate nest burrows in the ground. The cells are provisioned with froghoppers (Philaenus spumarius) or similar bugs. The adult wasps will visit umbellifers to feed.

Food

Flowers visited
Umbellifers such as wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa), carrot (Daucus carota), hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) and water-dropworts (Oenanthe sp.). In France, Bitsch et al. (1997) also list angelica (Angelica species).

Predators

The nyssonine wasps Nysson trimaculatus and N. spinosus, and the sarcophagid fly Metopia campestris are noted as cleptoparasites on the Continent (Lomholdt, 1975-1976).