Hunting wasp

Whether solitary or social, most species construct some form of protection or nest in which they hide the prey and in which the larvae can feed and pupate in reasonable security.

In contrast carnivorous social wasps generally feed prey piecemeal to the larvae as soon as they bring it back to the colony, so there is no need for preservation of the material.

In comparing the various hunting wasp taxa listed here, it is of fundamental importance to bear the following point in mind: supposing that members of one taxon exhibit adaptations to a given life history or biological strategy, and that another taxon has similar adaptations apparently more sophisticated, that need not in itself imply that either is descended from, or relevantly related to, the other.

Where the ancestral record of the more sophisticated strategy is unavailable, it often may be reasonable to observe that intermediate stages resembling the mechanisms of extant forms could be perfectly viable.

Bearing this in mind, and that each of the superfamilies under discussion includes families other than those listed here, families that are in no way hunting wasps, consider the following, consulting the links and references for detailed discussion of the biology: Although it had long been realised that bees were in essence a natural grouping of wasps that fed primarily on nectar and pollen, it took the development of molecular biology to demonstrate the actual grouping of true bees with the following families of definitive hunting wasps.

Crabronid species in some taxa concentrate on flies, others on bees, others on cicadas, but the overwhelming majority build tunnels, whether single or branched, with one or more larvae inside.

[5] There were earlier publications, usually informal, including some by deservedly prominent authors, such as the Peckhams, whose working lives overlapped that of Fabre.

[7] This is no reason to disrespect the authors of the time; even a century later, advances in molecular biology have led to an upheaval in Hymenopteran taxonomy that, however necessary, is a source of cognitive dissonance in workers brought up in the 20th century tradition, and who, for example, never would have thought of classifying hunting wasp taxa among the Apoidea.