Foraging niche separation of social wasps in an invaded area: Implications for their management

MASCIOCCHI, MAITÉ; UNELIUS, CARL RIKARD; BUTELER, MICAELA

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2019 vol. 143 p. 1 - 7

0931-2048

Foraging niche separation may be a mechanism to promote coexistence of two com‐peting species by concentrating intraspecific competition relative to interspecificcompetition. The present study investigated foraging behaviour and microhabitatuse of two coexisting species of invasive social wasps, Vespula germanica and Vespulavulgaris, when foraging for two different food resources. Also, we tested the attrac‐tiveness of traps baited with a synthetic lure for those two species. We found thatV. germanica wasps prefer to forage at ground level regardless of the resource, whileV. vulgaris prefers protein resources at the shrubland level given a choice between aprotein bait at ground or at shrubland level. However, when baited with the syntheticlure, the species caught was not affected by the height at which traps were placed.That is, in a no choice scenario, the traps were sufficiently attractive to lure bothspecies of wasps to both microhabitats (ground and shrubland levels). Thus, our re‐sults support the existence of spatial niche differentiation at least in protein foragingand suggest that the synthetic lure evaluated could be used to trap both species ofVespula wasps present in Argentina. These results could help to improve manage‐ment strategies of these social wasps in an invaded area.