''Sphex ichneumoneus'', known commonly as the great golden digger wasp or great golden sand digger is a

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

in the family

Sphecidae The Sphecidae are a cosmopolitan family of wasps of the suborder Apocrita that includes sand wasps, mud daubers, and other thread-waisted wasps. The name Sphecidae was formerly given to a much larger grouping of wasps. This was found to be p ...

. It is identified by the golden pubescence on its head and thorax, its reddish orange legs, and partly reddish orange body. This wasp is native to the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the term We ...

, from

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

, and provisions its young with various types of paralyzed

Orthoptera Orthoptera () is an order of insects that comprises the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets, including closely related insects, such as the bush crickets or katydids and wētā. The order is subdivided into two suborders: Caelifera – grassho ...

. D. Hofstadter cites the observation by Woodridge of ''S. ichneumoneus'' continually repeating behavior (checking a burrow before pulling in a cricket) as an example of

genetic determinism Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether ...

, calling the behavior "sphexish". It is an example of a

fixed action pattern A fixed action pattern is an ethological term describing an instinctive behavioral sequence that is highly stereotyped and species-characteristic. Fixed action patterns are said to be produced by the innate releasing mechanism, a "hard-wired" neura ...

, as described by H.J. Brockmann, where the sign stimulus is the sight of paralyzed prey in correct orientation (head facing burrow) and position (≤3 cm from entrance in alignment with the dug mound) and the behavioral sequence is to pull the prey into the burrow by its antennae, if present (otherwise the wasp will position the prey outside, go into the burrow alone, reemerge headfirst and reevaluate, although it may uncommonly attempt to pull the prey in by another part of its body). The burrow of the great golden sand digger consists of a descending shaft with individual brood chambers arranged at right angles to it. This arrangement makes it difficult to pull prey into a brood chamber without getting stuck and is one possible reason why the wasp always checks to ensure the path is clear before preferentially pulling its prey down by its antennae. In addition, female wasps commonly build their burrows nearby those of other females of their species and may even share a nest, but will fight with other wasps if they encounter them inside their burrow during prey retrieval. Thus, an unattended nest may pose a risk to a laden wasp if it has not been inspected first.

References

External Links

* Sphecidae Wasps described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Apoidea-stub