46 Anthony Harris

Very early mid-August 2013 occurrence of live adult male and female spinolae (Smith, 1856) (: ) in Otago and Canterbury AC Harris, Otago Museum, P.O. Box 6202, Dunedin 9059

Abstract Adult male and female Mason , P. spinolae, were found live in August, 2013, in Dunedin, Oamaru and Banks Peninsula, three months earlier than usual.

Observations and Discussion On 19 August 2013, Mr Leslie Holland brought a live adult male and female of the Mason , Pison spinolae, to me at the Otago Museum (Figure 1). He captured these on 18 August 2013 in the kitchenette of his house at 4 Potters Road, Normanby, Dunedin (DN), after his wife noticed the female walking around on the ceiling. The male was captured on the window. The two wasps appeared to be recently emerged, and had untorn wings. Mr and Mrs Holland both realised that these wasps normally first appear “around the middle of November”. When I examined the property, I found remains of last season’s P. spinolae nests in a small lean-to built against the outside wall of the house, near the back door that opened into the kitchenette. It is likely that the wasps brought to the Otago Museum came from those nests.

When I published an article on the early appearance of these wasps in my weekly column ‘Nature File’ in the ‘Otago Daily Times’ of 2 September 2013 and requested readers finding live P. spinolae adults to contact me at the Museum and to post me specimens, there were two positive responses. The Weta 46:49-50 47

Mr Martin Tickner of Kotare Vale, Harmans Track, Little River, Banks Peninsula (MC), telephoned me on 3 September 2013 to state that eight male and two female P. spinolae adults had emerged from their clay nests and flew about his room on 24 August 2013. He thought this was very unusual because Mason wasps normally do not begin emerging at his place until November. Even during the past few years when it has been unusually warm during winter, spring and early summer at Little River, Mason wasps, until August 2013, have always emerged at their usual time, in November.

Mrs. Beverley Shearer of 5 Hannah Place, Oamaru (DN), sent an adult female P. spinolae that she had caught on a curtain in her house on 26 August 2013. She, too, thought it was “unusually early.”

Fig 1. Female (left) and male Pison spinolae adults captured live by Mr L Holland at 4 Potters Road, Normanby, Dunedin, on 18 August 2013.

48 Anthony Harris

NIWA provisional figures show the 2013 winter to have been one of the warmest ever recorded in Otago. Dunedin’s mean winter temperature, 8.4oC, 1.2 degC above the winter average, was the highest on record. Similarly, Oamaru (8.3oC, 1.2 oC above winter average), Lauder (4.7oC, 1.4oC above winter average), Alexandra (5.6oC, 1.4oC above winter average), and other Otago localities all had their highest winter temperatures ever recorded. In Dunedin and elsewhere in Otago, diverse flowers were out weeks and even months earlier than usual, while grass grub larvae (Costelytra zealandica [White, 1846] and Odontria striata White, 1846 (Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae)) were active from mid July and throughout August in some Central Otago soils normally frozen during those months. Temperatures for July and August at east Canterbury in 2013 similarly were significantly warmer than usual. It therefore seems likely that exceptionally warm conditions may have broken the diapause of the P. spinolae prepupae months earlier than usual and enabled them to develop into pupae from which adults emerged in August 2013 between Dunedin and Banks Peninsula.

The P. spinolae adult female and male collected by Mr. L. Holland are stored in the Otago Museum with acquisition numbers IV42604 and IV42605 respectively. See also AC Harris field note book number 95, pp. 24-30, p. 33; and field note book number 96, pp. 8- 10.