The foraging behavior of social wasps may vary throughout the day in response to different factors, including environmental variation and interspecific interactions. Body size is known to play a critical role in determining daily activity patterns in ecological communities. However, the body size characteristics of most species of social wasps is poorly known, as well the relationship between body size and foraging schedules. In this study, we evaluated the extent to which body size determines the patterns of daily activity in a community of social wasps. We found a high temporal overlap in most of the species pairs tested. The pattern of daily foraging activity fits a bimodal distribution for the majority of the species. Moreover, we found a relationship between body and foraging time; in general, smaller species tended to begin foraging in the early hours of the morning, in contrast to larger wasps, which began foraging later. These results suggest that patterns of foraging activity in social wasps are likely to be the result of complex interactions between many different factors, including body size.

社会黄蜂的觅食行为可能会因环境变化和种间相互作用等不同因素而全天变化。众所周知，身体大小在决定生态社区的日常活动方式方面起着至关重要的作用。但是，人们对大多数社会黄蜂的体型特征以及体型与觅食时间表之间的关系知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们评估了身体大小决定社交黄蜂社区日常活动方式的程度。我们发现在大多数测试的物种对中存在高度的时间重叠。日常觅食活动的模式适合大多数物种的双峰分布。此外，我们发现了身体与觅食时间之间的关系。一般来说，较小的物种倾向于在清晨开始觅食，相比之下，较大的黄蜂则随后开始觅食。这些结果表明，社会黄蜂中觅食活动的模式很可能是许多不同因素（包括体型）之间复杂相互作用的结果。