Sphecidae

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Sphecidae (Latreille, 1802) is a cosmopolitan family of wasps that include digger wasps, mud daubers and other familiar types that all fall under the category of thread-waisted wasps. Both of the traditional definitions of the Sphecidae (the conservative one, where all the sphecoid wasps other than ampulicids and heterogynaids were in a single large family, and the more refined one, where the 7 large sphecid subfamilies were each elevated to family rank) have recently been shown to be paraphyletic, and the most recent classification is closer to the conservative scheme; the families Heterogynaidae and Ampulicidae are the sister taxa to what are now two families (instead of one), the Sphecidae and Crabronidae.