A first list of vespid wasps from Vietnam (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)

Abstract

Provespa is endemic to the area. Vietnam, spread from north to south along the eastern margin of the Indochina Peninsula, covers a total area of approximately 331210 km 2 with 4639 km long of the land boundary, and 3444 km long of the coastline. Vietnam ' s land is mostly hilly and densely forested. Mountains account for 40% of the country ' s land area, and tropical forests cover around 42%. So Vietnam is expected to have high magnitude of biodiversity. Especially North Vietnam, which is within the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot and shows climatically more or less warm-temperate characteristics, is expected to be one of the centers of divergence of vespid wasps, as has been demonstrated for the polistine genus Polistes Latreille, 1802. Nevertheless, the vespid wasps in the area are yet poorly studied. An annotated distributional checklist of social wasps of Vietnam was performed by Nguyen et al. [2005]. In this checklist, they listed 45 species in 10 genera occurring in Vietnam. However, this work has hitherto been for 8 years, and many new species of the social wasp are added to the Vietnamese fauna since then. Specially, subfamily Eumeninae only treated formal in the middle of 2012. ABSTRACT: A first list of vespid wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) recorded from Vietnam as of the end of 2013 is presented. A total of 109 species belonging to 32 genera of four subfamilies, including, Eumeninae (33 species), Stenogastrinae (10 species), Polistinae (50 species), and Vespinae (16 species), are treated as valid. 19 new distributional records and the information of the distribution of the species are also provided. РЕЗЮМЕ: Приводится первый список складчатокрылых ос (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) Вьетнама. По состоянию на конец 2013 года он включает 109 видов из 32 родов четырёх подсемейств, в том числе Eumeninae (33 вида), Stenogastrinae (10 видов), Polistinae (50 видов) и Vespinae (16 видов). Для 19 видов приведены новые точки находок. DISTRIBUTION. China; Taiwan; Philippines; Vietnam [Giordani Soika, 1986]. NOTE. Giordani Soika [1986] recorded this species from Vietnam, but did not show exact locality.

Correspondence: Comments on "a first list of vespid wasps from Vietnam (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)" by Pham and Li (2015)

“…Pham and Li (2015) published a list of vespid wasps from Vietnam on 26 August 2015, which included 109 species in 32 genera of four subfamilies, namely Eumeninae (33 species), Stenogastrinae (10 species), Polistinae (50 species), and Vespinae (16 species) [17].…”

“…The distribution records of all species listed in Pham & Li (2015) were presented in previous publications excluding some additional records of some widely distributed species.…”

“…For all of the above reasons, the list given in Pham & Li (2015) was an incomplete checklist of vespid wasps from Vietnam and contributed little to the knowledge of vespid wasps in Vietnam.…”

“…] as "the presence of this species in Vietnam, while possible, is not documented", but this species was still listed in Pham & Li (2015)[17] without any additional information. Thus, only 74 presently recognized species of social wasps were listed in Pham & Li (2015)[17].So if all published literature to end of 2014 is considered, the numbers of all vespid wasps in all four subfamilies given in Pham and Li (2015) were known to be wrong.…”