The
superfamily
SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...
Apoidea is a major group within the
Hymenoptera
Hymenoptera is a large order (biology), order of insects, comprising the sawfly, sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are Par ...
, which includes two traditionally recognized lineages, the "
sphecoid
The Spheciformes is a paraphyletic assemblage of insect families which collectively comprise the "sphecoid wasps". Larvae are carnivorous.
These are all the members of the superfamily Apoidea
The superfamily Apoidea is a major group within t ...
"
wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...
s, and the
bee
Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...
s. Molecular phylogeny demonstrates that the bees arose from within the traditional "
Crabronidae
The Crabronidae are a large paraphyletic group (nominally a family) of wasps, including nearly all of the species formerly comprising the now-defunct superfamily Sphecoidea. It collectively includes well over 200 genera, containing well over 9 ...
", so that grouping is
paraphyletic
In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...
, and this has led to a reclassification to produce monophyletic families.
[Manuela Sann, Oliver Niehuis, Ralph S. Peters, Christoph Mayer, Alexey Kozlov, Lars Podsiadlowski, Sarah Bank, Karen Meusemann, Bernhard Misof, Christoph Bleidorn and Michael Ohl (2018) Phylogenomic analysis of Apoidea sheds new light on the sister group of bees. ''BMC Evolutionary Biology'' 18:71. doi:10.1186/s12862-018-1155-8]
Nomenclature
Bees appear in recent classifications to be a specialized lineage of "
crabronid" wasps that switched to the use of
pollen
Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophyt ...
and
nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists ...
as
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
The ...
l food, rather than
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
prey; this makes the traditional "Crabronidae" a
paraphyletic
In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...
group. Accordingly, bees and
sphecoid
The Spheciformes is a paraphyletic assemblage of insect families which collectively comprise the "sphecoid wasps". Larvae are carnivorous.
These are all the members of the superfamily Apoidea
The superfamily Apoidea is a major group within t ...
s are now all grouped together in a single superfamily, and the older available name is "Apoidea" rather than "
Sphecoidea" (which, like
Spheciformes
The Spheciformes is a paraphyletic assemblage of insect family (biology), families which collectively comprise the "sphecoid wasps". Larvae are carnivorous.
These are all the members of the superfamily Apoidea, which are not bees and which in o ...
, has been used in the past, but also defined a
paraphyletic
In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...
group and has been abandoned).
As bees (not including their wasp ancestors) are still considered a
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
group, they are given a grouping between superfamily and family to unify all bees,
Anthophila
Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfami ...
.
[ Engel, M.S. (2005)]
Family-group names for bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea)
''American Museum Novitates'' 3476: 1–33.
Phylogeny
This
phylogenetic tree
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...
is based on Sann ''et al.'', 2018, which used
phylogenomics
Phylogenomics is the intersection of the fields of evolution and genomics. The term has been used in multiple ways to refer to analysis that involves genome data and evolutionary reconstructions. It is a group of techniques within the larger field ...
to demonstrate that both the bees (
Anthophila
Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfami ...
) and the
Sphecidae
The Sphecidae are a cosmopolitan family of wasps of the suborder Apocrita that includes sand wasps, mud daubers, and other thread-waisted wasps.
The name Sphecidae was formerly given to a much larger grouping of wasps. This was found to be p ...
arose from within the former "Crabronidae," which is therefore
paraphyletic
In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...
, and which they suggested should be split into several families; the former family
Heterogynaidae nests within the
Bembicidae, as defined by these authors.
These findings differ in several details from studies published by two other sets of authors in 2017, though all three studies demonstrate a paraphyletic "Crabronidae."
References
Further reading
*
*
Michener, C.D. (2000). ''The Bees of the World''. Johns Hopkins University Press.
External links
All Living ThingsImages, identification guides, and maps of Apoidea.
Popular introduction to the Hymenoptera Apoidea.
Fiori e Api d'Albore and IntoppaFlower visiting bees in Europe pdf. In Italian but excellent table with Latin names.
Native Bees of North America
{{Apidae-stub
Apocrita superfamilies