Redescription and New Distributional Records of Delta esuriens (Fabricius) (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae) from Indian States

Though relatively more taxonomic works on the potter wasps have been done on the fauna of Palearctic and Nearctic regions, our information on the fauna of Indian subcontinent is very scanty and fragmentary. Among the species reported from Indian subcontinent many need detailed taxonomic revision and redescription. One such species is Delta esuriens (Fabricius), originally described by Fabricius in 1787 as Vespa esuriens from India. Original description was very short which is inadequate for the identification at species level. Subsequently Bingham (1897) provided a redescription of it which is also very short. Hence, in this paper a detailed redescription is provided. Delta esuriens is a moderately large potter wasp species with 14-25 mm in length. This species is distributed in Palearctic, Oriental and Australian regions. In India, it is so far reported from Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. In this paper, it is newly recorded from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh.