[10] In 1768 HMS Endeavour left Plymouth on the first voyage of James Cook, reaching the harbour of Rio de Janeiro a few months later, in November.

Here one of the passengers, the wealthy naturalist Joseph Banks, procured a female specimen of giant wasp, which made its way around the world to eventually arrive in England in 1771.

[11][12][13] Meanwhile, the Dane Johan Christian Fabricius had travelled to Uppsala University in 1762 to study under the celebrated Carolus Linnæus, and upon returning to Denmark two years later began to work on his first publication, the Systema Entomologiæ, in which he attempted to list all known species of insects (which included spiders, crabs and other arthropods at the time) according to the new Linnaean system.

[3][16] The authority citation of the species has erroneously been attributed to Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure,[17] who wrote some of the most important books on the subject of wasps.

In 1853 de Saussure recognised that numerous taxa which had been described by others were synonyms of this species, and synonymised P. onerata, P. rufipennis, P. transverso-strigata and P. valida with P. carnifex.

He placed P. carnifex in a third group with characteristics in between these two, together with P. aurifer and a new species he described from Nuevo México (a Mexican territory which had recently been conquered and annexed by the USA and at the time included everything in between modern California to east Texas), P.

[21] Among the species of Polistes which occur in Pará, Adolpho Ducke groups it with P. canadensis, P. goeldii and P. versicolor, based on the morphology of the mesopleuron.

Also the first tergite is very compact, dorsally convex, and elevated vertically compared to the constriction where the abdomen is inserted into the thorax.

rufipennis appears to differ from the nominate type by the body and wings being colored a tan brown, almost chestnut.

[26] As a member of the order Hymenoptera, Polistes carnifex has mandibles, which may be used to obtain wood fibers, build nests, or capture and macerate prey.

The digitus has a band of obvious punctation around its base, and an anteroventral lobe that is short with a rounded end, and is covered in easily rubbed off (evanescent) bristles.

[20] In Paraguay, according to the identification key provided by Bolívar Rafael Garcete-Barrett, the most similar species are P. cavapyta, which has a completely yellow head and is banded with a rusty orange color, P. lanio, which has extensive black coloration on the mesosoma (~thorax) and back of the metasoma (~abdomen), P. canadensis, which has a red metasoma except some black in the sutures between the plates of the exoskeleton.

[31] According to Joseph Charles Bequaert in 1936, many of the specimens labelled as P. carnifex in collections are P. major, these two species being commonly confused.

[32] Polistes carnifex is native to Central and South America; its range extends from Arizona and southern Texas[1] to Misiones Province in northern Argentina.

[24] In 1940 he was proven wrong however, when the first specimen from the United States was collected in Arizona by John J. duBois, this record first being published in 1955.

[39] In tropical zones like Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina it is found in extensive wooded habitats without heavy rains.

[40] To create a colony, the queen enlarges a cell by introducing a ball of recently macerated pulp on her own.

While completing this task, the queen moves her antennae in circles about her head, touching the parallel-lying opposite wall.

[6] The female workers that emerge from the first cells then assist with the further building and development of the colony, and can themselves mate and lay eggs.

[40] Polistes carnifex is a social species and the nests consist of a number of horizontal papery cells in which the young are reared.

[6] In a study in Costa Rica, nests were found hanging from branches of various species of low thorny trees near an ephemeral swamp.

[6][41] The nests are hanging and open-faced, supported by a single Petiole in the centre which is strengthened by a tough gelatinous material.

[6] The English naturalist Thomas Belt observed how a Polistes carnifex wasp which had found a large caterpillar, chewed it up and made half of it into a macerated ball.

Picking this up, it hovered for a few seconds and then circled several times round the place among the dense foliage where the other half of the caterpillar lay.

It then flew off but returned a couple of minutes later and quickly located the correct hole among the leaves.

After several fruitless hunts interspersed with short circling flights, it finally located the dismembered prey and flew off with its trophy.

Belt marvelled that the insect could use a mental process so similar to that a human might have used to remember the specific location of its prey.

[citation needed] While the diploid female workers do not mate, they are able to lay unfertilized eggs that will develop into haploid males.

[42] In Costa Rica, male Polistes carnifex congregate on the top of ridges where they maintain territories.

Here they remain until they thrust through the cuticle and pupate (males) or release infective first-instar larvae onto flowers (females).