Vietnam has a rich social wasp fauna, consisting of three major components: the northern element, of which the center of divergence might be on the eastern slope of Himalaya; the Sundaland species, which are distributed in the southern part of Vietnam; and species widely distributed in the IndoMalayan region. | TẠP CHÍ SINH HỌC 2013, 35(3se): 16-25 DISTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL WASPS IN VIETNAM (HYMENOPTERA: VESPIDAE) Nguyen Thi Phuong Lien1*, Junichi Kojima2 1 Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, VAST, *phuonglientit@ Natural History Laboratory, Faculty of Science, Ibaraki University, Mito, 310-8512 Japan 2 ABSTRACT: Distribution records of social wasps in Vietnam are summarized and their distribution patterns are discussed. A total of 76 species in 11 genera of social wasps are recognized in Vietnam. They are 11 species belonging to four genera of the subfamily Stenogastrinae, 51 species in four genera of the Polistinae and 14 species belonging to three genera of the Vespinae. Distribution records of social wasps in Vietnam are given according to the three climatic conditions (Northern, Southern and Mountainous areas), showing that the numbers of species are higher in the mountainous areas and tend to decrease from north to south. Vietnam has a rich social wasp fauna, consisting of three major components: the northern element, of which the center of divergence might be on the eastern slope of Himalaya; the Sundaland species, which are distributed in the southern part of Vietnam; and species widely distributed in the IndoMalayan region. Keywords: Vespidae, climatic condition, distribution, social wasps, fauna, Vietnam. INTRODUCTION Social wasps, namely Stenogastrinae (hover wasps), Polistinae (paper wasps) and Vespinae (hornets and yellow-jackets) in the family Vespidae, consisting of about 1,000 described species worldwide, are beneficial insects in that they may attack many agricultural pests to feed their young [8, 11, 32], and thus they are, at least potentially, effective predators of insect pests in biological control programs [15, 10]. Also, because they are at the top-position in a food-web of terrestrial arthropods as well as pollinators of many plants [18, 7, 17], social wasps play important roles in an ecosystem where they occur, and thus they
