The Evolution of Parasociality and Nesting Behaviors in Pompilidae (Hymenoptera): Using Phylogenetics to Propose New Hypotheses of Behavioral Evolution

确定进化关系最引人注目的应用之一是解释复杂行为的进化。蜘蛛黄蜂表现出多种与筑巢相关的行为，过去曾假设过这些进化场景，但从未进行过测试。该项目的具体目标是重建和修订蜘蛛黄蜂的更高级别分类，提出有关筑巢行为如何进化的新方案，并维护一个组织该项目信息的网站。进化关系和相关性将根据形态、行为和分子数据进行估计。研究结果可能会挑战有关一般社会行为进化以及黄蜂筑巢的现有范式，这可能会为大学教科书中提供的信息提供科学严谨性或修改。这项研究也很重要，因为它将培训本科生和研究生形态学和分子方法，并将有助于将退休专家的分类学信息转移给年轻一代的系统学家。 该项目还将推出非专家也可以使用的产品。 生成的交互式密钥将使非专家能够识别蜘蛛黄蜂，同时该网站也可供非专家使用，并将成为从高中到专业水平的有用教学工具

One of the most compelling applications of determining evolutionary relationships is to explain the evolution of complex behaviors. Spider wasps exhibit a variety of behaviors associated with nesting for which evolutionary scenarios have been postulated in the past, but never tested. Specific objectives of this project are to reconstruct and revise the higher-level classification of spider wasps, to propose new scenarios for how nesting behaviors may have evolved, and to maintain a website that organizes information on the project. Evolutionary relationships and relatedness will be estimated from morphological, behavioral, and molecular data. The results are likely to challenge existing paradigms concerning the evolution of social behaviors in general, as well as wasp nesting specifically, which will likely lend scientific rigor to, or revise, information presented in college textbooks. This study also is important because it will train undergraduate and graduate students in morphological and molecular methods, and will help transfer taxonomic information from a retired expert to younger generations of systematists. The project will also result in products that will be accessible to non-experts. The interactive keys produced will enable non-experts to identify spider wasps, while the website will be approachable to non-experts and will be a useful teaching tool from the high school to professional levels