Solitary cavity-nesting Hymenoptera constitute a group of important bioindicators of terrestrial habitats. Some of them, like caterpillar-hunting potter wasp Ancistrocerus trifasciatus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae), are quite abundant in both continuous and fragmented habitats and might be a promising model species for studying the impact of habitat fragmentation and landscape connectivity on genetic diversity of entomophagous insects. Highly polymorphic microsatellites are a powerful molecular tool for intraspecific studies but the development of this marker system de novo is especially laborious and time-consuming. An alternative time- and effort-effective approach to establish the microsatellite markers for the species of interest is the cross-species amplification of loci already isolated in related species. Here we present a panel of five polymorphic microsatellite loci for A. trifasciatus developed by cross-species amplification of twenty-nine microsatellite markers published so far for nearctic potter wasps.
