Not all of the brood is destroyed. In this case, the adults females malaxate the brood that they destroy and feed it to the remaining brood. During one of these events. somewhat astonishingly, an adult male P. metricus was observed to malaxate a larva and feed a fragment of this to a surviving larva.
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Polistes annularis, whose species name is Latin for "ringed", is also known for its distinctive red body color. Polistes metricus adults malaxate (malaxate means knead or rub [stuff] to make it soft)LEXICO their insect prey by chewing them into a pulp, sucking out and ingesting the body fluids, then feeding the rest of the morsel to their larvae. The most widely distributed South American wasp species, Polistes versicolor, is particularly common in the southeastern Brazilian states. This social wasp is commonly referred to as the yellow paper wasp due to the distinct yellow bands found on its thorax and abdomen.
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Due to their inability to store honey, wasps are primarily carnivorous. They will feed on a multitude of insects, spiders and arthropods. To do this, adults will malaxate prey and feed on the juices. Other times they have been observed eating meat, mollusks, fruit and nectar.
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The colony then terminates in mid-August. The inquiline queen dies by mid-July, if not earlier from fights with host workers. After the colony ceases, the queen will enter hibernation in a sheltered area. She will then emerge and feed on nectar and malaxate arthropods until she attempts to usurp a host colony.
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In fact, many males solicit liquids from developing larvae. Workers forage for food, capture and malaxate prey, defend territories, and monitor the distribution of resources among larvae. The larvae twitch back and forth in their nests to attract the attention of the workers and queens. When approached by adults, larvae reach back to expose their heads.
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After prey has been caught, workers fly off quickly so they can malaxate the prey. This behavior might be adaptive since it takes successful workers away from the site of capture and avoids further contact with other workers. Prey theft occurs when V. atropilosa are confined in screenhouses but not when they are foraging in their natural habitat.
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In early development, the queen lays eggs and takes care of larvae. Before the emergence of workers, the queen is responsible for feeding the brood. To feed developing larvae, the queen captures prey by incapacitation, trims it to an appropriate size for carrying, and brings it back to the nest to further malaxate the item. Males do not contribute to parental care.
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P. major major larvae primarily feed upon caterpillars and treehoppers. Adult wasps can not ingest solid foods, only liquids and those foods that have been grounded up. The adults forage for prey and will return to the nest with the body of their catch. The female workers malaxate the prey, removing liquid from the bolus, and feed the solid remainder to the larvae in their cells.
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Malaxation is an act performed by an adult wasp that involves grabbing an insect or piece of an insect, then chewing and crushing it with the mandibles (typically at the same time inverting it and spinning it with the fore legs) until it is a pulpy consistency. This final product is usually then fed directly to larvae. In P. metricus, females mix fructose into the morsel that they malaxate. During the process of malaxation, adults feed themselves from the liquid or semisolid material that they extract from the provision morsel.
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