Piyuma prosopoides (R. Turner 1908)

Piyuma prosopoides (Turner)

Bohart and Menke (1976) reported this species from the Philippines, Taiwan, Borneo, and Australia. It is found in Sri Lanka in both the Wet Zone and Dry Zone, where we collected it as follows.

Trincomalee District: Trincomalee, China Bay

Amparai District: Ekgal Aru Reservoir

Ratnapura District: Weddagala

These localities are 25–400 m in altitude, and the average annual rainfall is 1650–4900 mm.

I collected four males 11–12 February 1977, in the Sinharaja Jungle near Weddagala. They were hovering in front of a dead barked log, 10 cm in diameter, lying on the ground in the rain forest. Presumably they were awaiting the emergence of females. I also collected a male a day earlier at the same locality visiting extrafloral nectaries on a leaf of kenda. On 20 February 1977 I captured a female, 5.9 mm long, without prey, hovering in front of a log with its bark still on, in Ekgal Aru Sanctuary Jungle.

Iwata (1941) published (under the synonymous name Crabro iwatai Yasumatsu) an account of nests found in Taiwan. The nests were in abandoned beetle borings in a standing dead tree. The borings were 5 mm in diameter, and the nests were 10–11 cm long. There were 2–4 cells arranged linearly from the bottom of the boring, each capped by a partition of wood chips. There were one or two empty vestibular cells above the provisioned cells that were capped by a partition of a hard gummy substance. One cell contained 12 flies about 4 mm long and a small larva. Seven species of prey were stored, two of Trypetidae, one of Drosophilidae, three of Stratiomyidae, and a winged specimen of Psocoptera. Iwata later (1964) reported a female prosopoides visiting a wound on the trunk of Samanea saman in Bangkok, Thailand to obtain the exuding gum which presumably she used to seal her nest.