#sphecid

[crevicedwelling]

hello! i am a relatively new user here on tumblr, less than a year, and i have heard a comment or two about a 'wasp discourse' that happened here, that wasps are much more nice than bees or something among those lines

this caught my curiosity as im writting a wasp based character whos just an ahole as i did it on what i knew abt them from general internet and im stuck on wether i should maaayybe change them up a bit

if its not too much to ask do you happen to know a bit abt this discourse? or have a link to it? or if not to the discourse itself some other link that elaborates abt the same topic? perhaps even someone else i can ask this?

thank you very much!

to start off, there are a lot of bees and wasps in this world and it is not easy to generalize about them. there are ~20,000 bee species, and the vast majority of these are solitary bees that nest in the ground, plant stems, or in holes in wood, and because they produce no honey or have a colony to guard, have no need to be defensive or aggressive towards humans (because “towards humans” seems to be what most people base this idea off of). colonial bees, like honeybees, are actually much more defensive than solitary ones; they have huge food stores and many defenseless larvae, hence their nasty stings (or bites, for the stingless bees) and swarm defense of their hives.

bees, however, are just a family of wasps. their closest relatives are believed to be the crabronid wasps (example: cicada killers) and sphecid thread-waisted wasps (ex. mud daubers). these wasps, and most others, are also largely solitary, and hunting prey aside, don’t typically use their stings for anything other than personal defense. of the hundreds of thousands of wasps, most of them (75%) are not just solitary but also parasitoids that develop inside other insects. it’s hard to say “all wasps are assholes [to people]” when some 100,000 of them are tiny specks smaller than sesame seeds that nobody other than scientists notice.

two parasitoids: a braconid ~3mm long & something else ~0.3mm long

the wasps most people take issue with are vespids, since they like the same foods we do (sweets, meat) and have powerful stings to defend their nests. these include the social hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps, but many mason wasps and the like are solitary (and, you guessed it, want nothing to do with people). vespids are great predators of caterpillars, flies, and other pests that humans don’t like in addition to being pollinators.

a yellowjacket: Vespula squamosa

the usual anti-wasp, pro-bee sentiments go: wasps attack for no reason, don’t pollinate, don’t make honey, and are “assholes.” wasps do pollinate (most wasps, bees and ants don’t eat solid food, and therefore largely drink flower nectar; some plants are only pollinated by wasps).

some tropical wasps do actually make honey, though it’s not harvested by humans. it’s sort of silly to say that making honey is what makes bees “good” though—a very selfish mindset, and for example butterflies are well-liked by people despite not making any edible products for us.

wasps also attack only when provoked, either because you’re near a wasp nest or when you lean on one accidentally. they are defending their baby sisters and themselves, same as bees would. at least in the US, I think the reason that wasps are so hated is that we have many species of paper wasp and yellowjacket that are willing to nest on or under houses, while the (invasive) honeybees prefer trees or are kept by beekeepers in artificial hives, so it’s just more likely you’ll run into problems with wasps than bees.

tl;dr:

wasps and bees are neither “nice” nor “mean.”

bees are mostly loners that don’t bother people. colonial bees will sting to defend their nests or themselves from predators. most bees are pollinators, who gather pollen to feed their larvae. a few species make honey that humans harvest.

wasps are mostly loners that don’t bother people. colonial wasps will sting to defend their nests or themselves from predators. most wasps are pollinators, and most hunt or parasitize other insects to feed their larvae.

[jupiterswasphouse]

[PHOTOS TAKEN: JULY 18TH, 2024 | Image IDs: Four photos of a metallic, blue-ish black sphecid wasp on the green leaves of a small fig tree /End IDs.]

[addicted2wasps]

What to do when anxious? Draw a male Sphex latreillei, of course! Probably my favourite Sphecid wasp. Native to Chile. Drawn with coloured pencils and white paint marker for the wing highlights. I'm off to sleep, goodnight!

[illegal-fruit]

i literally just finished these messy ass sketches of my FIRST AND ONLY SCARAB SONA

(im posting it as fast as possible bc i dont want someone else to pop out a wasp sona BECAUSE UGHH DAMNIT, I LOVE WASPS SO MUCH THEY'RE SO ELEGANT AND BEAUTIFUL AND UNAPPRECIATED)

ik they're defensive af and love attacking ppl just for looking at them the wrong way, BUT I SHOULD HAVE YOU KNOW THAT SOME SPECIES OF WASPS, such as sphecids, are very docile and I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE BECAUSE I HANDLED ONE OF THESE SUCKERS BEFORE and it was literally so sweet

ENOUGH TALK, I TALK TOO MUCH

here is my mud dauber God auditor sona NAMED APOIDAE HEHE

im not sure if im settling for this as his official design, so im completely open to suggestions and criticism

i also really like the headcanons that Scarab's wings are all jacked up, so i decided id torture my sona, too BY RIPPING OFF THAT MFS LITTLE WINGS, because ik that if i were a bug with delicate, little paper thin wings, I WOULD BREAK THEM OFF IN TWO SECONDS WITH MY CLUMSY ASS, UNCARING ASS

anyways TW: if ur afraid of bug, GO AWAY

BUG DOWN HERE↓↓↓

hehe this was my little waspy buddy, i let him go back outside shortly after this, but i had to make sure to feed him some honey first

[drhoz]

#2036 - Sceliphron laetum - Covered-cell Mud Dauber

A large Sphecid wasp that builds roughly cylindrical cells out of mud (or wet concrete), stocks them with paralysed spiders as food for her young, then covers the entire thing in another layer of mud.

S. laetum is found across most of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and SE Asia. They find the sheltered walls of human buildings ideal wasp building sites. Like most solitary wasps, not particularly aggressive unless you go out of your way to bother them.

The usual victims are orbweaving spiders, but the wasps are picky about which of the paraysed arachnids in each cell they'll lay their egg on - it's usually one with a softer exoskeleton, that will be easier for the young wasp larva to start chewing into.

[razehider]

random assortment of recent-ish bug finds that i thought didn't warrant a whole post but still deserved to be seen. apologies in advance for the washed out colors and blurring in some of these because my phone's camera is comically bad

megachilid (?) (do not ever ask me to ID a bee i will self-combust) bee that was possibly dead or dying. no clue what went on here but it didn't respond to any movement and i'm pretty sure i could've straight up reached out and touched it. neat set of chompers on it, though

little Lixus sp. weevil, probably L. pulverulentus. eternally bummed out i didn't have a better camera for this one. still, i'm glad i managed to prevail against its lack of self-preservation and get it onto a leaf to get a better look at its shoes

some sort of sphecid wasp (lord help me i've got to get better with hymenopterans). annoyingly hard to get a picture of with a phone camera with the world's worst shutter speed but it sort of worked out. absurdly cute face on this thing

very large Ergates faber lady. i actually did consider making a whole post just for her because, as you might know if you've ever lived in western europe, seeing a single animal bigger than a thumb is practically a miraculous event. she was very insistent on poking around this wooden beam with her ovipositor as seen in the pic on the right, which is bizarre considering the dozens of actual trees and rotting stumps surrounding her that i assume her children would like better

[scrumpyfan43]

Great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) decides I’ve gotten too close and pretends to be scary

[tiffanybozic]

Happy Halloween! In celebration of creepy cool: I recently captured a quick glimpse of this solitary mud dauber wasp stuffing a 🐛 into her nest. She’ll lay a single egg in this nest she built and provision it with several juicy live paralyzed victims for her offspring to feed on. Can you imagine if wasps were human size?! 😱 #muddauber #wasp #paralyse #sphecid #tiffanybozic #PGHILL #Bioblitz2017 #CASfieldnotes (at The Habitat Penang Hill)

[onenicebugperday]

@angel-official submitted: i found this very very shiny guy, very sadly passed, on my windowframe today, i think a wasp? has a green, golden sheen. but i'm not sure what it is exactly because i've never seen something like it before around here! found in the mountainous Heredia region of Costa Rica. (no need to censor location) would it be possible to ID?

It is a wasp! Specifically looks like a thread-waisted wasp in Sphecidae, but not sure on genus or species. Looks a bit like the genus Chlorion, but generally those are blue metallic, not green. But I suppose there could be green ones I'm unaware of! Either way...RIP, friend...

[photapir]

A rather monochromatic (achromatic?) sphecid wasp--it looked very similar to a Black and Yellow Mud Dauber, but without the yellow.

15 July 2017

[crevicedwelling]

do you mind ID-ing bugs for people? you seem very good at it. i hope it's at least fun.

most people are pretty decent about sending submissions, which means not sending me an unidentifiable smear without a location (as close and good a photo as possible, with a specific geographic location and habitat as you are comfortable giving guarantees the best results). keep in mind I am not an expert on any one type of invertebrate and if you want a definite, species-level ID, you’d be better off going to an expert who studies your sort of creature.

in most cases, I use my own (broad but limited) bug knowledge to establish higher-level classifications, then get more specific by using the iNat app to get its AI’s opinion of the photo and search for what I think it might be in the location provided, and returning to what I know to rule out things the app gives me. for example I can tell that the wasp is in the Sphecidae, but I have no idea what species of sphecids live in Tanzania, and I’ll need the app to offer me some possibilities that I can pick through. if I’m in the mood for a really specific ID, I might dig around in the literature or databases for what it could be.

I do find it fun on occasion, especially when it’s challenging (the blister beetle from south India was a nice puzzle recently). plus, it helps hone my ID skills which always come in handy later! I have a pretty good memory when it comes to biology and so every critter I’m exposed to gets filed away somewhere and often gets recalled when I find something similar.

I wonder if all the IDs are cluttering my page? I really don’t care about maintaining any sort of aesthetic though and would rather people know more about bugs than not! I welcome asks of any type all the time, and try to answer all I am comfortable answering as best I can.

[jupiterswasphouse]

[PHOTOS TAKEN: AUGUST 7TH, 2024 | Image IDs: Four photos of a metallic blue sphecid mud dauber wasp with black wings on the lip of a black wheel barrow /End IDs.]

[addicted2wasps]

Cuckoo wasps make the perfect ping pong balls....if you're a Sphecid!

Sphex ichneumoneus and Ammophila sp. enjoying a game made possible by their Chrysidid friend. This concept was inspired by an old doodle from 2018.

[saturniidays]

any chance you can help me find a source to prove that bees are wasps? I'm getting bullshit results on google and I'm too dumb to read the scientific texts. Trying to convince someone

ohhh god i just had the same discourse with people about ants a while ago and I got so utterly bored of it. The problem is that it all depends on your opinion on if paraphyletic groups are valuable for the purpose of classification. If the person you are arguing with thinks that paraphylies are valid, you will never be able to convince them that bees are wasps without first convincing them that paraphylies are bullshit.

I personally think that paraphylies are only useful outside of the context of classification. All vertebrates are fish, we all have gills and whatever, but if you only want to talk about aquatic fish only, we just use the word "fish" cause that's just how the english language developed to be.

We gave bees a different english name because humans found them more useful, so they got set apart from the rest of wasps, and the fact that they aren't just related, but a type of wasp themselves, is not common knowledge to anyone but entomologists. I can't even find a source spelling that out because it's one of those things we (those of us with good opinions at least) acknowledge anyway.

The idea that bees are special enough to be separate from other wasps is ridiculous. Some wasps make galls. Some wasps parasitize caterpillars. Some wasps make giant underground nests. Some wasps are wingless. Some wasps grew a ton of hair on their bodies because they decided to get their protein from pollen instead of by eating other animals. Bees are just vegetarian wasps. It's not revolutionary that they took a different lifestyle to other wasps because all wasps have different lifestyles. If you arbitrarily decide that bees are different, then the insects we call "wasps" in the english language becomes a paraphyletic group, which is simply not scientifically useful. The group would mean nothing. We gain no knowledge whatsoever if we act like they aren't wasps.

If they want to act like it is valid that everything in green is a wasp but bees (anthophila) and ants (formicidae) are not, ask them why we should even consider chrysididae to be wasps? why should ichneumonids or vespids or mutilids or sphecids be wasps? It really just seems like they've singled out bees because they have their own name in english. Are they going to allow the faults of the english language to dictate science to them?

pro-paraphyly people dni i'm too tired to argue and you won't convince me anyway.

[drhoz]

#2136 - Isodontia sp. - Grass-carrying Wasp

Synonyms have included Leontosphex and Murrayella.

Sphecid wasps that line and block their nests, in plant cavities, with dry grass or hay. The wasps stock the nest with paraylsed katydids and other Orthoptera first.

Isodontia has over 30 described species, found in most parts of the globe, but I don't know which species are found in Australia.

Tumbarumba, NSW

[usgsbiml]

I had a net named after this wasp.  Philanthus gibbosus - The Beewolf once, but I left it at a pullout somewhere I think in New Jersey (or was it Delaware?) and someone stole it!   Tattoo territory with this wasp here for sure (at least for me).  \

Whenever you have a lot any particular living thing something else is going to eat it.  There are a lot of bees out there (at least in some areas), and here is their predator, the Beewolf;  a sphecid wasp (darn closely related to bees it is) that hunts its bee cousins, stings them a little until just paralyzed and then feeds their little paralyzed bodies to their baby Beewolves in subterranean Beewolf caves.  

Note there are now a lot of humans around, and some say they have overpopulated, so perhaps we are due for some sort of alien invasion of the peoplewolf creatures (actually if they can get themselves to the Earth they are probably working at a higher level than "creature"), a zombie plague is also a possibility, but that seems more like a distraction.  Oh, check out the odd appendages on the front legs...not clear what their utility is, possibly decoration, but likely something more practical.