Hymenoptera
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As one of the four megadiverse orders of insects, Hymenoptera serve critical roles as pollinators (especially bees, which are responsible for >$14 billion worth of agriculture; Morse & Calderone, 2000), biocontrol agents (parasitoid Hymenoptera help save >$20 billion worth of agriculture per year; Werren et al. 2004), herbivores, and as model organisms for research on social behavior, physiology, virus coevolution, and genomics (see Table 1).
At least 115,000 species have been described worldwide (Sharkey 2007), and more than 9,000 articles have been published since 1980 on Hymenoptera taxonomy. While this in itself is a tremendous accomplishment, estimates of the species remaining to be discovered hover between 300,000-3,000,000 (Gaston et al. 1996). Assuming that Sharkey's (2007) estimate of 1,000,000 undescribed species is realistic it would take at least 100 active Hymenoptera taxonomists describing 10,000 species over their careers to fully discover this species richness; this estimate, however, does not account for the increasing evidence for cryptic diversity (e.g., Smith et al. 2008). Given the importance of these organisms to the health of our ecosystems and to understanding our natural world NSF has been incredibly supportive of Hymenoptera systematics, funding an AToL (EF-0337220), a PBI (DEB-0614764), at least five PEET projects, four REVSYS, and countless other proposals that incorporate descriptive taxonomy.
Table 1. Hymenoptera as model systems.
| model hymenopteran | articles (1980-now) | service as models |
|---|---|---|
| Apis mellifera (honey bee) | 20,100 | eusociality, genomics, pollination, foraging behavior |
| Formicidae (ants) | 15,300 | eusociality, foraging behavior, invasion biology, ecology |
| Bombus spp. (bumble bees) | 6,850 | eusociality, foraging behavior, pollination, host-parasite interactions |
| sawflies ("Symphyta") | 5,490 | ecology, plant-herbivore interactions |
| Cotesia spp. | 4,170 | physiology, virus coevolution, parasite-host interactions, foraging/host finding ecology, cryptic species |
| Polistes spp. | 3,080 | eusociality, behavior, nest architecture |
| Nasonia vitripennis | 2,070 | Wolbachia, genomics, hybrid incompatibility, genetics of mating, courtship, and speciation |
