DescriptionPollen Wasp with clubbed antennae. Ceramius sp (C. fonscolombei-lusitanicus-hispanicus) (Vespidae; Masarinae) (32413975022).jpg
Alcornocales N.P. Andalucia, Spain
Pollen wasps forsake stinging, eating, and feeding other insects to their offspring, for plying flowers. They harvest pollen and nectar
Masarines share their vegetarian habit and other interesting characteristics with bees, their distant relatives in the order Hymenoptera. Like most bees, masarines are solitary - there is no colony or evidence of social behavior - each female acts independently to nest and forage for her offspring. Masarines have long mouthparts, common (though far from universal) in bees, that enable them to reach the nectar of some flowers with deep corolla tubes, like beardtongues (Penstemon). They collect nectar and pollen in an internal crop, as do some bee species, not in a hairy external apparatus on the hind legs or under the abdomen, as do most bees.
Like some other bees (and wasps), North American masarines make hard nests of mud attached to rocks, ledges, and sometimes twigs. Typically, nests are arranged as multiple parallel cells. Each cell contains an egg and a single pollen-nectar loaf, sealed with a mud plug.
Masarines occur on all continents but Antarctica, although they are abundant in relatively few places. They are especially diverse in the fynbos and karoo biomes of southern Africa, but not in North America where only 14 members of a single western genus, Pseudomasaris, occur. The clubbed antennae of Pseudomasaris are a distinctive characteristic enabling one to separate them from our more common wasps.
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