Talk:Wasp

Life span

I came to this article looking for the lifespan of wasps, and couldn't find anything. Maybe it should be included.

Tinchote (talk) 18:45, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Tinchote - if you're looking for details of the Yellowjacket's span as an adult you'll find some in that article. On wasps in general, it's hard to say much because the thousands of species are all different, but like most insects, weeks to months mostly covers it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:21, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Haplodiploidy and eusociality

Hello, I suggest that these sentences be removed:

"Eusociality is favoured by the unusual haplodiploid system of sex determination in Hymenoptera, as it makes sisters exceptionally closely related to each other." "In wasps, as in other Hymenoptera, sex is determined by a haplodiploid system which means that females are unusually closely related to their sisters, enabling kin selection to favour the evolution of eusocial behaviour."

Although Bill Hamilton suggested that inflated sororal relatedness could explain all-female workers in the Hymenoptera and also the apparent predisposition of haplodiploids to evolving eusociality, subsequent theory and empirical work has called this into question.

Females are more related to their sisters (r = 3/4) than to their own offspring (r = 1/2), but they are less related to their brothers (r = 1/4), so their average relatedness to siblings is the same (r = 1/2) as their relatedness to offspring. This was pointed out at least as far back as 1976 (e.g. Trivers and Hare, 1976, Science vol. 191 pp. 249-263) and has been accepted for a long time in the theoretical literature, despite not really filtering through. Recent empirical work (Ross et al, 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.10.013) has also shown that there is no statistical association between haplodiploidy and female workers.

Cheers! :) N.g.davies (talk) 14:57, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose: this is a widely-attested theory, and the fact that some scientists disagree is (as golfers say) par for the course. By all means let us say there are alternative views, with refs. On the intricate details of the relatedness, this article is certainly not the right place for that - there is a full account with a table of all the combinations father-daughter etc in the Haplodiploidy article, and there's another general discussion in Eusociality. I suggest we leave this article very much as it is unless we need to add something small for balance. Any substantial discussions should be in the two articles I've named, and which indeed you've named in the title of this talk section. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:03, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Chiswick Chap, thanks very much for your reply. As an active evolutionary biologist, my personal judgement is that I have presented the consensus view among people who work on the topic, and that support for the 3/4 relatedness hypothesis is very much in the minority. I agree that the wasp page is not the place for a detailed explanation. Perhaps if I have a chance later, I'll take a look at the pages you cited, as well as the Evolution of eusociality page, and see if I can make the case there. To me, the 3/4 relatedness thing is just one of those common scientific misconceptions which (from my enthusiast's point of view) is interesting enough to be worth clearing up. If you're interested, early challenges to the haplodiploidy hypothesis include the Trivers and Hare paper cited above; B. Charlesworth, 1978, J. Theor. Biol. 72: 297–319; E.L. Charnov, 1978, J. Theor. Biol. 75: 451–65; R. Craig, 1979, Evolution 33: 319–33. More recent works include AFG Bourke & NR Franks, 1995, Social Evolution in Ants (Princeton); JE Strassmann and D Queller, 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104: 8619–8626; JJ Boomsma, 2007, Curr. Biol. 17: R673–R683; and A Gardner, J Alpedrinha, SA West, 2012, Am. Nat. 179: 240–256. (Sorry if the extensive referencing is inappropriate here, it's just what I'm used to!) Best wishes! N.g.davies (talk) 16:23, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Then the Haplodiploidy article at least needs work, and probably Eusociality too; and we may need to tweak what's said here as well. I note however that a more recent paper, Gardner and Ross 2013 suggests that haplodiploidy may indeed have promoted eusociality in the Hymenoptera, but by modifying the sex ratio rather than by affecting relatedness. So perhaps the theory is not as dead as all that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:04, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Exactly—but that's not an effect of the relatedness asymmetries per se, but rather of the lability of the sex ratio (which could—in principle—work equally well for diploid species). In the interest of disclosure, I'm currently writing a paper with Gardner and Ross on precisely this subject. N.g.davies (talk) 21:30, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Aha! That is funny. Ok, in that case you should put a brief note on your user page that you have a potential coi on this topic; and you should go ahead and edit the various pages as objectively as possible. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:37, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Drunk wasps reverted..."not in this article"...where then?

Hey Chiswick Chap, going off your edit summary addressed to me ("thanks but not in this article which covers the whole group, nearly all of which are carnivorous"), where would you suggest adding this information instead? Thanks. PcPrincipal (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Add it to the article for whichever species the news item refers to. If the news item does not indicate which species were studied, then it rather certainly must not qualify as a reliable source; an actual scientific study would certainly give species names. Dyanega (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

First paragraph way too difficult

Can the jargon be deleted from the first paragraph per the first GA criterion. Words like clade, order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita and paraphyletic, are not understandable to an appropriately broad audience (which would probably include primary school children, but definetly 12-yr olds). They should not appear in the lede at all or be sufficiently explained in a later paragraph. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:34, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Quite a challenge. I've had a go. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:46, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Wow, that was fast! Second sentence is clear, but the first is not quite there yet. The infobox already contains the technical information, so I'm not convinced both the order and the suborder should be mentioned in the first paragraph. Furthermore, to exaggerate, the first sentence now reads like: a wasp is a wasp, not a bee or an ant. I'm looking at Britannica, and I think they manage it a bit better. What about something like:

'Wasps' are a group of (flying/winged?) insects characterized by a narrow waist that are part of the order of ants, bees, and wasps (Hymenoptera). Bees and ants also have a narrow waist, but wasps are distinguished from them the fact they have little hair on their legs and have a slender body. Together with the bees and ants they form a complete natural group with a single ancestor, but wasps are not such a group on their own. Femke Nijsse (talk) 18:45, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Hm. I think that's way too roundabout. On the order, it is only visible to those interested in clicking through, so it's entirely harmless to newbies, and it provides precision for other readers (also a large audience). Beginners won't think that ants have hairy legs or fat bodies, really, either. I'll see if I can tweak the wording, but there is such as thing as trying too hard. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:54, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

The first paragraph is also overly vague in its taxonomic definition of wasps. The first paragraph states, "a wasp is any narrow-waisted insect of the order of ants, bees, wasps, and sawflies (Hymenoptera) that is neither a bee nor an ant." Per the following paragraph on wasp phylogeny, wasps are also distinct from sawflies under hymenoptera. While valid, the phrasing could confuse some readers regarding the taxonomic distinction between wasps and sawflies. Chloedotexe (talk) 16:42, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, as you say, the text is correct. Since we're not to be forbiddingly difficult in the first paragraph, we've necessarily avoided the language of cladistics. Links are provided for the sawflies and other groups, and people have at their disposal the options of looking at the diagrams and, ahem, reading the article. No amount of wordsmithing can infallibly and unambiguously explain a complex subject in one brief paragraph. If we start seesawing between texts, it will get worse not better. Reading it again, no, it's not overly vague; and we agree it's actually right. Let's leave it, please. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:47, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

murderous wasp

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/russian-ecologist-killed-after-wasp-bites-her-on-the-lip/news-story/2c55b32525ef9b72400fbac8c1d5d609 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.69.65.128 (talk) 14:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 August 2021

Source under the 'as pests' feels a bit flimsy. One person writing into The Guardian's Notes & Queries doesn't feel like a true authority, and I expect there are plenty better alternatives out there. 82.44.6.40 (talk) 21:20, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

 Done. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (talk) 22:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Identify

Wasp nest

I took a photo of a beautiful nest. I believe it to be a paper wasp nest. It was taken in Southeastern Wisconsin. Can someone help me identify the nest variety and should we include it in the appropriate article? Thanks Lightburst (talk) 01:22, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Wasps in literature:

In Harry Potter and the goblet of fire: the character Ludo Bagman,wears a black and yellow striped outfit with a large wasp attached to the front, jersey for the English Quidditch team Soraya Wolz (talk) 11:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

There are certainly many logos, icons, and team symbols, both in fiction and in reality, and we can't begin to mention them all here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:36, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 November 2022

Similar to whale infobox - add it’s an informal name in the infobox? 2601:183:4A80:E570:656C:9BB1:E47D:6EA7 (talk) 20:48, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

 Not done Unclear what informal names you are looking to add. I couldn't find any for the listed taxon. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 21:01, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

"Wasp facts" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Wasp facts has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 September 1 § Wasp facts until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 01:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)