12/07/2025
Every colour of the spectrum!
(Not to scale!)
I’m sorting through all my wasp photos from the past four years, working on a Wasps of New England poster volume 2 with the several hundred more I’ve photographed since making the one with 260 species in 2022. I think I’m over 500 species of wasp photographed all from within no more than about an hour from my house. Wasps are AMAZINGLY diverse, ranging in size from the almost invisible to the massive tarantula hawks. They inhabit virtually every ecosystem on land, and have diversified and diversified into the possibly millions of species in the past 225 million years or so. They come in every colour you can imagine! Some are dull and brown, some jet black, some ivory white, and many with a wide range of vivid colours. These colours help advertise their stings to potential predators, help win them a mate, and help hide them from predators (or their prey). Colour is highly important to wasps as they can see a range of colours, including ultraviolet which we can’t see. But also highly visual predators like birds (their main vertebrate predators) can see even more colours, and bright vivid hues help keep those threats at bay. But they can also help hide them, many nocturnal wasps (like the Ophion with the long antennae here) are bright orange, a colour during the day that is clearly obvious, but at night disappears into the shadows. Many bright green wasps are especially shiny, likely helping them blend in with the vegetation as they zip about them. It’s the unbelievable diversity of wasps that really fascinates me, they are so unique and different from each other in shape, size, colour, etc. Biodiversity is so important and backbone to a healthy ecosystem.
All from Western Massachusetts, United States of America.
