Checklist of the Apoid Wasps of Canada, Alaska and Greenland now published!

One of the goals of the researchers at RAM is to document the biodiversity in our province, and this endeavour has reached an important milestone with the publication of the brand-new Checklist of the Apoid Wasps of Canada, Alaska and Greenland on February 13, 2025 (free download here). The Checklist is authored by Matthias Buck, our Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, and Andrew Bennett from the Canadian National Collection of Insects in Ottawa. Matthias is currently the only active expert on apoid wasps in North America, and the scope of the project is in fact not just Alberta but all of Canada. Alaska and Greenland are also covered because of their geographic proximity (but no apoid wasps have ever been found in Greenland).

Apoid wasps – what are they??
Apoid wasp is a technical term that refers to a group of wasps that is very closely related to bees. The root of the word "apoid" is the Latin word Apis, which means "bee." It is used in zoological nomenclature as the genus name for the all too familiar honeybee, Apis mellifera. Apoid wasps are a highly diverse group of wasps: There are over 10,200 described species worldwide and roughly 1,365 in America north of Mexico. The Canadian fauna includes 531 species. That might sound like a large number, but it represents only 6% of the entire Canadian Hymenoptera fauna (NB: Hymenoptera are wasps and related insects such as bees, ants and sawflies). Alberta is home to 326 species, more than any other province or territory in Canada. Apoid wasps are currently classified into ten families which include 86 genera in Canada. Most of them don't have English names but those that do are called digger wasps, thread-waisted wasps, aphid wasps, square-headed wasps, mud daubers, sand wasps, beewolves, and weevil wasps. Until recently, nobody knew exactly how many species there are in Alberta or most of the other provinces or territories, and where exactly they occur. This is where the new Checklist comes in.

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Checklists: creating a detailed inventory of the fauna
Those of us who are birders are probably very familiar with the term checklist in the context of nature exploration. It simply means a comprehensive list of all the species that have been recorded from a defined area. The present Checklist is the first checklist ever published that provides detailed species inventories of apoid wasps for every Canadian province and territory. The last time apoid wasps were catalogued in Alberta was in 1947. The Annotated List of the Wasps of Alberta (https://doi.org/10.4039/Ent79121-7) was compiled by Edgar Harold Strickland, first professor of entomology at the University of Alberta. It was the first provincial checklist of apoid wasps published in Canada – a pioneering work that reported many new and astonishing findings. Almost 80 years later, however, our knowledge of this group of insects has advanced so much that Strickland's list can no longer be relied upon. Back in Strickland's days only 160 species were known from Alberta. This number has more than doubled to 326 species (not counting 17 species new to science that remain to be described!). Most of the increase is the fruit of decades of painstaking faunistic research at RAM, both by Matthias and former Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, Albert Finnamore.

What's new and what's cool?
Here is a brief overview of some of the new findings presented in the Checklist:

• Canada has 531 described species and 86 genera of apoid wasps
• For each of the 86 genera, there is an image of either a live specimen or of a specimen from the RAM's collection, assembled on 15 colour plates
• Alberta has 326 species, followed by Ontario (294 spp.), British Columbia (292 spp.) and Saskatchewan (248 spp.)
• 70 species are newly recorded for Canada (13% of all Canadian species)
• 124 species are recorded from Alberta for the first time, followed by Saskatchewan (117 spp.) and Manitoba (113 spp.)
• The Checklist includes 2,046 provincial and territorial records (plus 63 Alaskan records)
• There are at least 20 species new to science (17 in Alberta) that await scientific description
• 11 species are newly recorded for North America and the New World, eight of which have been introduced accidentally
• 23 introduced species are recorded from Canada, an increase of 53 %
• The vast majority of records are based on verified museum specimens. The remainder are based on citizen science observations on the websites iNaturalist and Bugguide (see below) or specimens from DNA libraries. Only 1.6% are based on unverified (but credible) literature data
• The Checklist corrects or excludes 147 previously published erroneous records: 33 for Canada, 112 for provinces and territories, and two for Alaska
• The Checklist also clarifies the taxonomy of 15 species: six species are again recognized as valid (reinstated from synonymy), and nine species are no longer considered valid (synonymized with other species)

Citizen Science
One of the exciting aspects of this checklist is the contribution made by citizen scientists through the popular internet platforms iNaturalist.ca and BugGuide.net. Citizen science has contributed to the project in various ways:

• Four new Canadian records were first observed on iNaturalist and BugGuide (5.8% of new Canadian records)
• 69 new provincial/territorial/Alaskan records were first observed on iNaturalist and BugGuide (9.8% of all new regional records)
• Two new introductions to North America were first observed on BugGuide (25% of new introductions)
• 100 observations (85 on iNaturalist, 15 on BugGuide) are cited individually in the paper
• 48 images of live wasps in the image gallery were kindly contributed through observers on iNaturalist and BugGuide

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Faunal change
One of the important results of this study is the realization that the Canadian apoid wasp fauna is undergoing rapid changes. Both the accidental introduction of species from other continents and (likely) climate change have resulted in an increase in the number of species present in the region. Studies like the present checklist and historical baseline data are needed to document such changes, which would otherwise go undetected. Distribution data gathered by citizen scientists plays an even more important role in this regard. For example, two species that were accidentally introduced from Europe and Asia were first documented on BugGuide (see https://bugguide.net/node/view/1529764 and https://bugguide.net/node/view/800551). Citizen science data on iNaturalist has documented rapid range expansions of 10 species in southern Ontario and Quebec (e.g., https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/232809009, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/195611563)

Next steps
Matthias is working on two more checklists that will ultimately cover all the stinging wasps and ants of Canada, Alaska and Greenland. The next checklist coming up will deal with cuckoo wasps and allies (Chrysidoidea) and the third one with the vespoid wasps (mason wasps, paper wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, spider wasps, velvet ants, etc.) plus ants. The overall goal of the checklist project is to document the entire insect order Hymenoptera, which – besides the groups already mentioned – includes bees, parasitic wasps, wood wasps and sawflies. In total, there will be 11 instalments (involving over 20 authors), four of which have already been published:

1. Introduction to the Checklist project (https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.82.60054)
2. Sawflies (https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.82.60057)
3. Parasitic wasps of the superfamilies Chalcidoidea and Mymarommatoidea (https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.82.60058)
4. Parasitic wasps of the superfamilies Ceraphronoidea, Cynipoidea, Evanioidea, Stephanoidea and Trigonalyoidea (https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.97.130428)

You can contribute!
If you love nature and have a camera or a phone, you can take pictures of wasps, bees, ants, and sawflies and upload your observations to iNaturalist or BugGuide. If you find something new it will directly contribute to the checklist project. But even if it's not new it will help to give us a clearer picture of the distribution of the species and provide a wealth of other information that is useful for conservation planning and many other types of research. Plus, you will learn a lot and gain a deeper appreciation of these fascinating creatures!

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