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The research career of Justin O. Schmidt (1947–2023) is reviewed and assessed. The pioneering nature of his research lay in treating the defensive means and tactics of aculeate hymenoptera and some arachnids as features of their overall anti-predator strategies. He devised methods for comparing the effects of hymenopteran venoms and stings that challenged the assumed correlation between venom potency and the pain that it induces.

Variation in wing design and wing loading according to body weight is well studied across taxa of birds and flying insects. Comparable studies have not been made in the few insects that show substantial size variation within the same phenon of a single species. We examine body measures of adults of the social wasp Dolichovespula maculata (Linnaeus, 1763), with particular attention to the limbs and wing loading. As expected, measures of the length of the legs scales isometrically with overall body weight and size. Against expectation, wing size also scales isometrically with body weight and size. This does not match the general pattern of comparison across species of flying animals, in which larger individuals have relatively larger wings, as a partial compensation for greater wing loading. We suggest that wing size in D. maculata may be constrained by the demands of life in a crowded nest.