[citation needed] As part of subfamily Polistinae, Polistes wasps are covered in short and inconspicuous hair, have a clypeus with a pointed apex, have a gena that is wide throughout, tergum 1 of the metasoma is almost straight to gently arched in profile, the tibia of the mid leg has two spurs, and the legs end in simple tarsal claws.

The genus can be distinguished from other Polistinae by a sessile metasoma (the first segment at most slightly longer than wide) and the fourth tarsomeres of the mid and hind legs being symmetrical.

The wasps begin by fashioning a petiole, a short stalk which will connect the new nest to a substrate (often the eave of a house or outbuilding), and building a single brood cell at the end of it.

Although nests can achieve impressive sizes, they almost always maintain a basic shape: petiolated (stellocyttarous), single-combed, unprotected, and open (gymnodomous).

These reproductives differ from their worker sisters by having increased levels of fat stores and cryoprotectant carbohydrate compounds (allowing them to survive the overwintering period).

Brood care and foraging behavior decline and worker numbers drop as dying individuals are no longer replaced by new ones.

[citation needed] The reproductive behavior of Polistes wasps provided some of the first evidence for the mathematical biologist W. D. Hamilton's 1964 theory of kin selection.

Hamilton showed that animals such as workers could be expected to provide assistance to relatives such as their queens according to the costs and benefits involved (K) and their degree of genetic relatedness (r), and gave the rule that now carries his name, K > 1/r.

Hamilton himself suggested an alternative possibility, namely that kin could become associated simply by "population viscosity" —that offspring tend not to disperse far from their birthplaces— and West-Eberhard (1969) found some evidence for this in Polistes.

However, Polistes species are now known to learn and remember chemical signals (hydrocarbons) picked up from the nest to distinguish nestmates accurately from non-relatives.

For example, in the species Polistes humilis the queen displays a "tail-wagging" behavior to assert her dominance over the worker class.

discriminate colony mates using an acquired (i.e. learned) cue, absorbing hydrocarbons from the natal nest at eclosion.

Studies of Polistes fuscatus have researched the molecular basis of the recognition "pheromone" used by the wasps, and indicate at least some of the recognizable labels have the same chemical constituents as the adult cuticular hydrocarbons.

[citation needed] In North America, the introduced European species Polistes dominula has rapidly colonized a significant area, and is considered an invasive pest.

[32] Various other insects are parasites or parasitoids of Polistes, including flies (e.g., Sarcophagidae), mantispids, and wasps in the families Torymidae, Mutillidae (rarely), Braconidae, and Ichneumonidae (e.g. Latibulus argiolus).