Vespa wilemani Meade-Waldo 1911

Kojima, Jun-Ichi, Saito, Fuki & Nguyen, Lien Thi Phuong, 2011, On the species-group taxa of Taiwanese social wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) described and / or treated by J. Sonan, Zootaxa 2920, pp. 42-64 : 56

Vespa wilemani Meade-Waldo 1911 [ Vespa vivax Smith 1870 ]

Sonan (1929: 147) listed the following four Ƥ under V. wilemani : 2 Ƥ, Rantaizan (6000 ft), 20.V.1928 (J. Sonan); Ƥ, Arisan (4600–7600 ft) 22.IV.1917 (T. Shiraki, S. Sonan); Ƥ, Karenko (4000–8000 ft), 20.VIII. [probably a typo of VII] – 4.VIII.1919 (T. Okuni, J. Sonan, K. Miyake, M. Yoshino). We located all of them in TARI. Sonan (1929) mentioned that “this species [V. w i l e m a n i] had been described as a new species by Meade-Waldo based on a single specimen collected by Mr. Wileman in Taiwan; it was not mentioned where Mr. Wileman had collected the wasp, but I think it was probably collected in Rantaizan or Arisan.”

Archer (1989: 34) synonymized V. w i l e m a n i under V. vivax in an ambiguous way, by stating “subspecies: wilemani Meade Waldo 1911 . syn. nov.” Later he ( Archer 1991, 1994) treated V. wilemani as a color form of V. vi v ax. Vespa vivax shows a disjunct distribution, occurring in the Hymalayan range (from Kashmir to southern Tibet and northern Myanmar) and mountainious areas in the south-western China (Sichuan, Yunnan) and Taiwan.