Yup! Was about to type out a similar reply.
To further clarify:
Hymenoptera - order of Insecta - ants, bees, wasps, hornets
Aculeata - infraorder of Hymenoptera - bees, wasps, hornets
Apidae - family of Aculeata - bees (also bumblebees)
Vespidae - family of Aculeata - wasps, hornets
Formicidae - family of Hymenoptera - ants
Except many non-Vespidae, both living and extinct, would readily be considered wasps. Look at this thing and tell me it’s not a wasp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eusapvertic.jpg
If that’s a wasp and a yellow-jacket is a wasp, then so are ants and bees, in the same way that we are apes and birds are dinosaurs. You wouldn’t call a zoo to deal with a loose human and you wouldn’t call dr. Grant to deal with a pigeon, but biologically it makes a lot more sense to deal with ancestry then with how a species interacts with humans.
You can’t argue “this looks like a wasp so it is a wasp” and then extend from that to “and because of evolutionary history, all these other things that don’t look like wasps are also wasps”
Defining groups of species with a common word is always going to be ambiguous, but you need to stay consistent in what you use to define it. By the same logic you can argue that humans are fish, because whales clearly are fish if you just look at them, and whales and humans are both mammals.
Sure, but I was responding to someone who was defining wasp (the common word) based on clade (using scientific words).
I’m fine with common parlance words for things. What I had issue with was arbitrarily restricting the definition of wasp to a specific clade, which would exclude ants and bees, and also a whole host of at the very least wasp-adjacent animals which would now be stuck with no real way to describe them.
(Also, yes, fish is a rubbish scientific word. We’re far closer cousins of salmon than sharks are. By any reasonable definition of fish, at least biologically, we are fish. You could redefine “fish” in the same way we define “tree”, i.e. based on structure and not on ancestry, but by that definition whales should still be fish. The word “fish” shouldn’t be allowed within 50 metres of cladistics.)
If that’s a wasp and a yellow-jacket is a wasp, then so are ants and bees,
That logic doesn’t check out, given Sapygidae is a family of sapygid wasps belonging to the Aculeata infraorder.
Aculeata is named after its defining feature, which is the modification of the ovipositor into a stinger. This trait doesn’t strictly constitute a wasp, which is why they have their own families (Vespidae, Sapygidae, Pompilidae, Myrmosidae, basically all of the Chrysidoidea superfamily, etc.).
All wasps are aculeate, but not all aculeates are wasps.
Just to confirm, you don’t think of jewel wasps, spider wasps, sand wasps, and flower wasps as wasps, since they’re not part of the Vespidae, correct?
I’ve mostly seen wasps defined as basically “Apocrita but not the ones we don’t think count as wasps because there’s too many of them, specifically bees and ants.” Which leads to the same weird reasoning that would somehow make legless lizards lizards, but not snakes. I’ve seen velvet ants referred to as wasps, but not ants, even though true ants are far closer cousins to Vespidae. That just isn’t a viable scientific definition. I’m glad we’ve mostly moved on to grouping avian dinosaurs among the dinosaurs, but it feels like a lot of similar groupings are still lagging.
I’m willing to accept Vespidae as a synonym of wasps, but that excludes a ton of wasps. It also erases the very wasp-like nature of ant ancestors, which is what makes cladistics so fascinating. So why not just open it up to include all Apocrita and be done with it?
I’m also fine with a morphological definition of wasps, like how “tree” isn’t based on ancestry but on structure, but you were the one pulling in the scientific names.
Just to confirm, you don’t think of jewel wasps, spider wasps, sand wasps, and flower wasps as wasps, since they’re not part of the Vespidae, correct?
Negative, those are all considered wasps alongside Vespidae. I said “that logic doesn’t check out” because what you had essentially said in that previous reply was “if wasp==wasp and wasp==wasp, then so are ants and bees”, which is… well… false.
It also erases the very wasp-like nature of ant ancestors
That ancestry is pretty much expressed in Formicidae belonging to the Aculeata infraorder, though I do agree that putting them under some sort of vespid superfamily would be even more fitting, since ants pretty much did evolve from wasps.
Yup! Was about to type out a similar reply. To further clarify:
Hymenoptera - order of Insecta - ants, bees, wasps, hornets
Aculeata - infraorder of Hymenoptera - bees, wasps, hornets
Apidae - family of Aculeata - bees (also bumblebees)
Vespidae - family of Aculeata - wasps, hornets Formicidae - family of Hymenoptera - ants
edit20260227: forgot ants belong to aculeata
Except many non-Vespidae, both living and extinct, would readily be considered wasps. Look at this thing and tell me it’s not a wasp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eusapvertic.jpg If that’s a wasp and a yellow-jacket is a wasp, then so are ants and bees, in the same way that we are apes and birds are dinosaurs. You wouldn’t call a zoo to deal with a loose human and you wouldn’t call dr. Grant to deal with a pigeon, but biologically it makes a lot more sense to deal with ancestry then with how a species interacts with humans.
You can’t argue “this looks like a wasp so it is a wasp” and then extend from that to “and because of evolutionary history, all these other things that don’t look like wasps are also wasps”
Defining groups of species with a common word is always going to be ambiguous, but you need to stay consistent in what you use to define it. By the same logic you can argue that humans are fish, because whales clearly are fish if you just look at them, and whales and humans are both mammals.
Sure, but I was responding to someone who was defining wasp (the common word) based on clade (using scientific words).
I’m fine with common parlance words for things. What I had issue with was arbitrarily restricting the definition of wasp to a specific clade, which would exclude ants and bees, and also a whole host of at the very least wasp-adjacent animals which would now be stuck with no real way to describe them.
(Also, yes, fish is a rubbish scientific word. We’re far closer cousins of salmon than sharks are. By any reasonable definition of fish, at least biologically, we are fish. You could redefine “fish” in the same way we define “tree”, i.e. based on structure and not on ancestry, but by that definition whales should still be fish. The word “fish” shouldn’t be allowed within 50 metres of cladistics.)
That logic doesn’t check out, given Sapygidae is a family of sapygid wasps belonging to the Aculeata infraorder.
Aculeata is named after its defining feature, which is the modification of the ovipositor into a stinger. This trait doesn’t strictly constitute a wasp, which is why they have their own families (Vespidae, Sapygidae, Pompilidae, Myrmosidae, basically all of the Chrysidoidea superfamily, etc.).
All wasps are aculeate, but not all aculeates are wasps.
Just to confirm, you don’t think of jewel wasps, spider wasps, sand wasps, and flower wasps as wasps, since they’re not part of the Vespidae, correct?
I’ve mostly seen wasps defined as basically “Apocrita but not the ones we don’t think count as wasps because there’s too many of them, specifically bees and ants.” Which leads to the same weird reasoning that would somehow make legless lizards lizards, but not snakes. I’ve seen velvet ants referred to as wasps, but not ants, even though true ants are far closer cousins to Vespidae. That just isn’t a viable scientific definition. I’m glad we’ve mostly moved on to grouping avian dinosaurs among the dinosaurs, but it feels like a lot of similar groupings are still lagging.
I’m willing to accept Vespidae as a synonym of wasps, but that excludes a ton of wasps. It also erases the very wasp-like nature of ant ancestors, which is what makes cladistics so fascinating. So why not just open it up to include all Apocrita and be done with it?
I’m also fine with a morphological definition of wasps, like how “tree” isn’t based on ancestry but on structure, but you were the one pulling in the scientific names.
Negative, those are all considered wasps alongside Vespidae. I said “that logic doesn’t check out” because what you had essentially said in that previous reply was “if wasp==wasp and wasp==wasp, then so are ants and bees”, which is… well… false.
That ancestry is pretty much expressed in Formicidae belonging to the Aculeata infraorder, though I do agree that putting them under some sort of vespid superfamily would be even more fitting, since ants pretty much did evolve from wasps.