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Large wasp genus is placed in the wrong family #263

Open gbif-portal opened 2 years ago

gbif-portal commented 2 years ago

Large wasp genus is placed in the wrong family

Dear GBIF Team,

The social wasp genus Polistes is part of the Vespidae family. However, on GBIF it seems to be erroneously placed in the solitary wasp family Eumenidae (e.g., https://www.gbif.org/species/1310500). Please could Polistes be moved to the family Vespidae?

In fact, Eumenidae/Eumeninae (which does not include Polistes) is now typically considered a subfamily of the Vespidae.

Kind regards,

Patrick Kennedy

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PatrickKennedy2022 commented 2 years ago

The same problem appears to be the case for Belonogaster (https://www.gbif.org/species/1310193), a genus of social wasps. They should be within the family Vespidae, but are instead listed in GBIF as belonging to the solitary wasp family Eumenidae.

PatrickKennedy2022 commented 2 years ago

And same issue for the social wasp genus Polybia (currently erroneously listed as being part of the family 'Eumenidae'): https://www.gbif.org/species/7235975

bdagley commented 1 year ago

Note also that in current taxonomic literature, Eumeninae and Polistinae are subfamilies of family Vespidae, despite that in the past the former was a family Eumenidae. GBIF seems to still use the outdated taxon Eumenidae (family), and so that's one reason why it may at times conflict with other Vespidae. As a related question, I also wanted to ask if GBIF could use the modern classification of treating Eumeninae as a subfamily of Vespidae, or was there any intended reason for using earlier or original names (e.g. to match dated specimen det. labels)? If needed, I could also open a separate issue for the Eumenidae vs. Eumeninae question.

ManonGros commented 1 year ago

@bdagley the GBIF backbone taxonomy is build by assembling different sources (see https://data-blog.gbif.org/post/gbif-backbone-taxonomy/ for more information). The family name Eumenidae came via the Catalogue of Life: https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/9XR from the ZOBODAT Vespoidea checklist. I understand that ZOBODAT Vespoidea is not a maintained resource but in the absence of a better one, this is what is used.

If you know of a good Vespidae checklist, please let us know (or better, let know the Catalogue of Life), it would be most helpful! You can comment on this issue for example: https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/data/issues/421

bdagley commented 1 year ago

@ManonGros The COL page taxonomy is incorrect, since Eumeninae has been treated as a subfamily for years, and also because COL lists at least three genera that never were in Eumeninae/dae: Belonogaster, Polybia, and Polistes (family Vespidae: subfamily Polistinae). The prevailing taxonomic view currently considers Vespidae a family (within superfamily Vespoidea), and all Vespidae or 'Eumeninae' taxa falling into the following subfamilies: Vespinae, Eumeninae, Polistinae, Stenogastrinae, and Masarinae.

Carpenter (1986) listed all the genera in Eumeninae, and Vecht and Carpenter (1990) listed all Vespidae genera. The iNaturalist Vespidae taxonomy should also be correct, although doesn't yet list all genera because it focuses on observed photos.