Anonymous #1 1w

They’re also extremely important in pollination and cleaning up carcasses, along with parasitoid wasps frequently hunting down agricultural pests! They’re also really pretty 🥺

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Anonymous OP 1w

Also, fun fact, bees and ants evolved from wasps! They all fall under the order Hymenoptera!

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Anonymous OP 1w

Yes! I actually got in a huge argument in this very yikyak about whether bees and ants are a type of wasp.

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Anonymous #1 1w

Wasps are some of the most incredible insects because they have such complex interactions with such a huge variety of plants and animals which they use as hosts. People don’t realize how wasps are everywhere they look. Like I think most people don’t realize those galls on all the trees around them were made by wasps

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Anonymous #1 1w

Something similar to the “ants and bees are types of wasps” is that termites are actually a weird group of cockroaches

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Anonymous #1 1w

Oh shit yeah, I learned that recently! I was looking into whether or not cockroaches were beetles (quickly found they weren’t) and at some point along the way discovered that!

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Anonymous OP 1w

Another fun thing to look at is how insects nestle inside crustacean taxonomy. It’s pretty debated but it seems like either remipedes (weird groundwater crustaceans) or branchipods (sea monkeys, triops, water fleas, and relatives) are the closest group to insects

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Anonymous #1 1w

Oh shit, cool! I figured insects were closely related with crustaceans, but I didn’t realize it was those crustaceans specifically!

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Anonymous #3 1w

The insect

1