Ants appearing in Vespoidea

I don’t know if it’s another reinexing issue or it’s connected with how Vespoidea was split not that long ago, but when searching for this taxon https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?locale=ru&nelat=7.819846999999999&nelng=119.813461&preferred_place_id=7161&swlat=0.461421&swlng=99.42283599999999&taxon_id=48740&view=species all ants that are found there are shown too, not one or two species, but as far as I can see all of them.

2 Likes

Interesting. I had recently created a project for Wasps and Allies and could not figure out why I had to exclude Ants [Family Formicidae] and Velvet Ants [Family Mutillidae] but did not have time to figure out why or if I just did not understand the taxonomy and had accidentally left them in somehow. The listing for Vespoid Wasps [Superfamily Vespoidea] only has Rhopalosomatid Wasps [Family Rhopalosomatidae] and Hornets, Paper Wasps, Potter Wasps, and Allies [Family Vespidae] whereas a search for Vespoid Wasps on Explore (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=48740&view=species) does show Ants and Velvet Ants as you have described.

1 Like

Yup, I see it too. Ants don’t appear under Observations but they do under Species.

1 Like

Has been also mentioned here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/limiting-and-scheduling-large-taxonomy-ancestry-changes/25486/7

3 Likes

You mean the Wiki page? iNat changed its taxonomy regarding Aculeata, so I believe @thomaseverest’s comment is an answer to the root of this problem.

I’m not just getting ants, but velvet ants and spider wasps too (none of these things are vespoids) and the ants are listing the wrong number of observations when they show up under vespoidea, for example the turfgrass ant listed 7 observations in my area on a search for vespoids, but searching the same area for turfgrass ants says 895 observations, which is correct, these are very common ants.

Also only some of the ant species in the area are showing up on the vespoid searches, not all of them, but there is no taxonomic thing determining which ones show up, because I get some of most subfamilies of ant, while missing others in the same subfamily

Yeah that’s pretty typical for indexing issues. Staff say they’ve fixed it but clearly still a problem. Any curator can inactivate/reactivate a problematic species, but that’s a bit impractical for a problem this big.