Reanalysis of the apoid wasp phylogeny with additional taxa and sequence data confirms the placement of Ammoplanidae as sister to bees

Abstract

Apoid wasps and bees (Apoidea) are an ecologically and morphologically diverse group of aculeate Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps). During the last decades, significant progress has been made in illuminating the phylogenetic relationships of the major Apoidea lineages. However, some uncertainties have remained. In this study, we present results from re‐investigating the phylogeny of Apoidea by including genome skimming data of key taxa that were missing in previous investigations: a representative of Entomosericini (tribe of the former Pemphredoninae) and a representative of Eremiaspheciinae (subfamily of the former ‘Crabronidae’). We additionally skimmed the genomes of two Heterogyna species (Heterogynaidae). Our results from applying concatenation and coalescence‐based phylogenetic approaches confirm the previously suggested sister group relationship of Ammoplanidae and bees. They also corroborate most taxonomic changes published in 2018 granting eight lineages of the former family ‘Crabronidae’ family status. However, some of our analyses indicate that the families Pemphredonidae and Psenidae could be para‐ or polyphyletic. After carefully assessing topological discordance and data quality, the exact placements of Heterogyna and of the genera Eremiasphecium and Entomosericus in the apoid wasp phylogeny remain ambiguous. However, our analyses indicate that inclusion of Entomosericus and Eremiasphecium in any of the currently accepted apoid wasp families cannot be well justified, and we consequently suggest raising Entomosericinae and Eremiaspheciini to family rank, respectively, to acknowledge this situation in the apoid classification: Entomosericidae Dalla Torre, 1897 (stat. n.) and Eremiaspheciidae Menke, 1967 (stat. n.).

Evolution and systematics of the Aculeata and kin (Hymenoptera), with emphasis on the ants (Formicoidea: †@@@idae fam. nov., Formicidae)

“…Our sampling was too limited to confidently assert what the ancestral eye forms of the two subfamilies were, or to what degree they have converged. The synapomorphies below should be considered with the reservation as Dinetinae were not sampled in the present study; this subfamily is supported as sister to Crabroninae sensu stricto(Sann et al 2018(Sann et al , 2021. Focused effort to define the Crabronidae is necessary.…”

“…2017, Sann et al . 2018, 2021), particularly with respect to fossil taxa. For this reason, and to hopefully benefit future study, we provide a classification of the Apoidea to tribal level.…”

“…Astatidae is here treated as two parts: Astatidae (Astatinae) and Dinetinae. Between the penultimate manuscript submission and the ultimate, the formerly incertae sedis Astatidae (Astatinae) was recovered as sister to Bembicidae + Pemphredonidae–Anthophila by Sann et al . (2021).…”

The origin and evolution of pollen transport in bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila)

“…Recent molecular phylogenies of Hymenoptera suggest pemphredonine wasps are the sister group to bees (Debevec et al 2012, Branstetter et al 2017, Peters et al 2017, Zheng et al 2018. Sann et al (2018Sann et al ( , 2021 pointed to the Ammoplanidae (also known as the pemphredonine subtribe Ammoplanina) as the closest relatives of bees. The biology of relatively few species of Ammoplanidae are known.…”

“…The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted September 22, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10. 1101/2021 The traditional hypothesis has been that the original bees transported pollen internally in the crop (Müller 1883, Malyshev 1936, 1969, Michener 1965, Jander 1976, Lanham 1980).…”