Talk:Ichneumonidae

The figure labeled "Metopius sp., Rhône (France)" is a male of Ichneumoninae, Ichneumonini. Perhaps someone who knows the Palearctic Ichneumoninae could identify the genus or the species. The thyridium of the first metasomal tergite appears as though it may be too broad for this to be a species of the genus Ichneumon.

The figure labeled "Cremastinae, (Tanzania)" is a species of Anomaloninae. Someone who knows the African Anomaloninae would hopefully know the genus and species. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.218.86.73 (talk) 04:03, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Metals

I don't think the explanation for the hardness of the wasps' boring apparatus makes physical sense. While having metallic Magnesium or Zinc would provide hardness (but be rather biologically implausible), ionised Mg2+ or Zn2+ (which are ubiquitous in life) do not form a metallic solid - indeed, they would be present as salts in solution. I'll remove it unless somebody can find a better reference.

It would also be good to have something on Darwin!

--129.67.75.128 (talk) 17:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. --Darwin

I would suggest to remove the last picture in the Gallery called : Grey spiderkiller. The picture shows a Pompilidae where the page here is presenting the Ichneumonidae familly.

Didier-35 (talk) 13:43, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Darwin Quote

Shouldn't it be moved to a different part of the article. It seems to put the neutrality of the article in question and serves only to critique theism. Applez2Applez (talk) 22:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Article changes 16 Aug 2015

I overhauled the article, adding new content and piecing together the different sections. Some points which may still need addressing: - I used wing vein names a la Gauld 1991, and for consistency called the family 'ichneumonids' throughout. Both are matters of preference and may benefit from changing. (ichneumonids vs ichneumon flies vs Ichneumonidea..) - The gallery would benefit from a more representative mix of images. Currently it mainly has microscope photos from KNP Uganda (some of these could be removed or moved to subfamily pages), and morphology. - There are isolated facts which need checking and potentially correcting. E.g. ichneumonid size (currently a few millimetres to seven or more centimetres) --Tapani.Hopkins (talk) 09:03, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I've put the punctuation before the references and wikilinked the captions. There are too many images from Kibale as you say; a more representative selection would be better, as would having images in the text not in a gallery. The morphology images again don't belong in a gallery; if they belong here at all, it should be next to a morphology section which calls out the images in the discussion. The sizes sound about right. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:41, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

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"Darwin Wasps"

There have been some edits recently which change occurrences of the name "Ichneumon Wasp" to "Darwin Wasp". Apparently, during a June 2019 conference, several researchers studying ichneumonids agreed that a new vernacular name would help stimulate interest in the wasps.

See: http://www.academia.edu/download/61506783/Klopfnstein_et_al._201920191213-79431-14c09jf.pdf

See also: https://zenodo.org/communities/ichn_meeting_2019?page=1&size=20 for presentations given at the conference.

I don't feel entirely confident arguing this, as I'm not myself a professional in that field, and three of the edits were made by someone who is. And I think I was a bit too angry+pompous in my comment when reverting one of the edits. But "ichneumon wasp" is still the term in most common use (though the editor has pointed out accuracy issues with that term). Most people have never heard "Darwin wasp" used; so that's hardly "commonly known as"! Having it at the top of the infobox is definitely not appropriate (yet.)

I think it would be better if "Darwin wasp" was listed among the alternate names for the wasps in the "Etymology and history" section, with the above-mentioned paper cited and a note that several researchers believe a change in the vernacular name would be a good idea. But I don't think unilaterally removing the old, and still most common, name is a good idea at this time. I definitely don't think it should be done unilaterally without at least some discussion on the talk page. People might come to the page while looking for information on "ichneumon wasps" and be misled into thinking that this isn't the wasp family they were looking for.

(And what if the name "Darwin wasp" never catches on among the general public?)

I'm making some more edits to restore the old name, but I'm not completely reverting the "Darwin wasp" edits because they did also add new information to the article.

AstridRedfern (talk) 16:11, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Additionally, the following statement was added during one of the edits:

"aspects that Darwin overlooked when using these wasps to make a point about the lack of evidence for a benevolent god."

Do other editors agree that this reads as opinion-based, and possibly advancing a religious viewpoint?

AstridRedfern (talk) 16:21, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

@AstridRedfern:, I agree that Darwin wasp doesn't (yet) belong in the lead/at the top of the taxobox. We usually avoid the phrase "commmonly known as" in presenting vernacular names of organisms (I realize it had been in the article for awhile). Many vernacular names are not at all commonly used. Even in the cases of "ichneumon wasp", I don't think it is all that commonly used; most people have probably never heard of ichneumon wasps/Ichneumonidae, some people are aware of both terms, and some people may be familiar with ichneumon wasps, but not familiar with the term Ichneumonidae (although I think this group of people would be smaller than the other two).

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with describing Darwin's religious opinions. However, that passage is taken verbatim from the paper by Klopfstein et al. (as is most of the first paragraph). That's not generally kosher, although the Klopfstein paper is licensed as CC-BY, making it compatible with Wikipedia's license, that material should probably be rephrased. With "Darwin wasp" in the "Etymology and history" section, it would be helpful to include an explanation there of the relevance of Darwin to ichneumonids. Plantdrew (talk)`

Just noting that I removed "Darwin wasps" as an alternate common name from the lead again - it had been added back despite the discussion here. I agree that at this point it doesn't really justify inclusion, until there is evidence that it is actually being used to any degree (which I couldn't find, the only place I found the new name being used online was an article explicitly talking about the proposed name change).Somatochlora (talk) 14:53, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Labium

Are Labium wasps really a genus within this family? If so it’s not mentioned here. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:59, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes its is in fact a genus as noted here. They are not usually called "Labium wasps", they are ichneumon wasps in the genus Labium--Kevmin § 14:38, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

FYI @Overlordnat1:--Kevmin § 20:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kevmin: Thanks, I’m now improved the link at the disambiguation page. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:27, 13 July 2023 (UTC)