__NOTOC__ ''Cerceris'' is a genus of wasps in the family Crabronidae. It is the largest genus in the family, with over 1030 described species and subspecies.
Cerceris Catalog The genus has a

cosmopolitan distribution In biogeography, cosmopolitan distribution is the term for the range of a taxon that extends across all or most of the world in appropriate habitats. Such a taxon, usually a species, is said to exhibit cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitism. The ext ...

, with species on every continent.Genaro, J. A. (2004)
A new species of ''Cerceris'' from Hispaniola, West Indies (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae: Philanthinae).
''Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society'' 77(4) 761-64. The adult female ''Cerceris'' wasp generally digs a nest in the soil and provisions it with living prey items she has paralyzed with venom.Alexander, B. A. and J. D. Asis. (1997)
Patterns of nest occupancy and provisioning in ''Cerceris rufopicta'' Smith (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae).
''Journal of Insect Behavior'' 10(6) 871-93. The prey are usually beetles, and sometimes

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

s. Many ''Cerceris'' are solitary, but some species share nesting sites or nest communally. The faces of the females are frequently modified with unusual projections on the clypeus and the clypeal margin which can take the shape of conical bulges to elongated curving "horns". Paralyzed prey are carried in the females' mandibles, which are somewhat elongated and tend to have prominent teeth, often with species-specific shapes. The abdominal segments are also constricted very strongly at the junctures, giving the abdomen a somewhat corrugated,

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

-like appearance.

Gallery

File:Cerceris triangulata, male BIML USGS.jpg, ''

Cerceris triangulata __NOTOC__ ''Cerceris'' is a genus of wasps in the family Crabronidae. It is the largest genus in the family, with over 1030 described species and subspecies.Cerceris fumipennis ''Cerceris fumipennis'', the only species of buprestid-hunting Crabronidae occurring in eastern North America, is found throughout the continental United States east of the Rockies: from Texas and Florida north to Maine, Wyoming, and into Canada ...

'' File:Cerceris concinna.jpg, ''

Cerceris concinna __NOTOC__ ''Cerceris'' is a genus of wasps in the family Crabronidae. It is the largest genus in the family, with over 1030 described species and subspecies.List of Cerceris species This is a list of 880 species in ''Cerceris'', a genus of hymenopterans in the family Crabronidae. ''Cerceris'' species * ''Cerceris abac'' Fritz and Mariluis, 1976 * ''Cerceris abacta'' Shestakov, 1915 * ''Cerceris abatanensis'' Reyes, 1986 * ' ...

References

External links

Hymis.de
Photographs {{Taxonbar, from=Q1430978 Crabronidae Apoidea genera