FNZ 32 - Sphecidae (Hymenoptera) - Introduction
Harris, AC 1994. Sphecidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera). Fauna of New Zealand 32, 112 pages.
(
ISSN 0111-5383 (print),
;
no.
32.
ISBN 0-478-04534-4 (print),
).
Published 07 Oct 1994
ZooBank: http://zoobank.org/References/0E1574B4-3C0C-4336-A49C-FCE1F6C55192
INTRODUCTION
The family Sphecidae consists of solitary or subsocial wasps most of which dig nest holes in the ground, nest in abandoned larval galleries or pupal chambers of wood-boring insects, or make nests of moulded mud above ground. Adults are characteristically active only in sunlight, and are not usually active on overcast days. Adults feed mostly on nectar, or from fluid exuding from the mouthparts of paralysed prey (females), but larvae are provided by the female with a store of paralysed insects or spiders. Adult sphecids often resemble bees, vespids, or pompilids. Although they are very diverse, sphecids comprise a natural group.
Sphecid wasps, bees, and the superfamily name
It is generally accepted that bees arose from a sphecid-like ancestor. Bees are sphecoid wasps whose larvae feed almost exclusively on nectar and pollen rather than insect or spider prey. (Some South American bees forage on carrion, whereas most 'normal' bees provision with pollen and nectar.) Bees are the closest relatives of sphecids, and certain primitive, unspecialised species in the two groups are sometimes difficult to tell apart. It is therefore not surprising that many authors have included them in a superfamily consisting of only two families, Apidae and Sphecidae.
Throughout most of the twentieth century sphecid wasps were either divided into a number of families or were treated as a single family. The latter approach was adopted by Bradley (1958), Evans (1964), Brothers (1975), Lomholdt (1975), and Bohart & Menke (1976). Because the last work, the definitive world treatment of the Sphecidae, has established that the group is best treated as one family with a number of subfamilies, this system has been adopted by almost all subsequent workers.
Although Michener (1944) suggested that bees 'should be placed as a division of the Sphecoidea' he nevertheless divided them into a number of families, as have most subsequent students of bees (in a superfamily Apoidea that excluded the sphecoids). Contemporaneously, many workers on sphecid wasps continued to group all bees in one family, the Apidae (e.g., Lomholdt 1975, Bohart & Menke 1976). Lomholdt (1975) stated that an autapomorphy for the Sphecidae was not expected to exist, because the most primitive elements of the sphecid/bee assemblage occur in the Sphecidae. He proposed that the two families Sphecidae and Apidae (s.l.) constituted the superfamily Sphecoidea. Gauld & Bolton (1988), noting that sphecoids are now almost universally treated as a single family, stated that the bees should in consequence be allotted comparable rank, viz. the family Apidae, and that the Sphecidae and Apidae should be grouped together in a superfamily Apoidea. In the 1991 edition of 'The Insects of Australia' Naumann treated the sphecids as a single family in a superfamily Sphecoidea, which included no other family, while Michener & Houston (in the same work) divided the bees into ten families, grouped into a superfamily Apoidea.
The first modern classification of the Sphecidae was that of Kohl (1896). Since then, a large number of valuable works have appeared, perhaps the most notable being those of E. Arnold, J. de Beaumont, R.M. Bohart, H.E. Evans, V.V. Gussakovskij, K.V. Krombein, J. Leclercq, O. Lomholt, A.S. Menke, V.S.L. Pate, W.J. Pulawski, K. Tsuneki, R.E. Turner, and A. Willink. In 1976 Bohart & Menke's monumental 'Sphecid Wasps of the World: a generic revision' was published, and all subsequent work on the family has started with that book as its basis.