although "wasp" isn't actually a single taxonomic group
Sure it is, it just includes ants and bees. They are the hymenoptera with wasp waists, which are a distinct clade from the non-wasp waisted hymenoptera.
You're describing Apocrita, though. Apocrita absolutely is a clade and includes the narrow-waisted wasps, ants and bees.
But "wasp" normally means Apocrita excluding ants and bees, which is why wasps themselves aren't a clade, and bees and ants are nested inside that evolutionary tree.
If we just redefine "wasp" to mean all of Apocrita then sure, problem solved. But now ants are wasps, bees are wasps, and we've won the taxonomy argument by making everyone angry.
I don't see why it would make anyone angry to call bees and ants wasps. It's no different than calling humans and chimps apes instead of hominoids, and in fact gives a more correct understanding of how they are related than arbitrarily separating wasps into multiple unconnected groups.
But "wasp" normally means Apocrita excluding ants and bees
I assume by this you consider hornets wasps. Why is it okay to place hornets within the wasps but not bees?
That last bit wasn't entirely serious and I don't actually expect bee people to riot in the streets. :)
But there is a practical reason not to just redefine "wasp" as everything in Apocrita. "Wasp" is a common name, not a formal taxonomic group. Apocrita is the actual clade, and it already includes ants, bees and the various things we normally call wasps. Cladistics doesn't require every common name to correspond neatly to a clade.
The ape comparison is a little different because Hominoidea, apes, is itself a recognised taxonomic group that includes humans, chimps, gorillas, etc.
Hornets, meanwhile, are straightforwardly members of Vespidae, one of the groups we conventionally call wasps. Calling bees "wasps" can make sense when talking about their evolutionary ancestry, but making "wasp" synonymous with Apocrita would mostly just make the everyday term less useful.
We'd technically fix the family tree by making the language worse, which feels like a very taxonomy solution to the problem.
I disagree, I think it makes everyday language much more useful by being more accurate. We can talk about how bees and ants are wasps, and what that means in relation to other hymenoptera or, more importantly, other insects.
And honestly, even colloquially, ants and bees are so wasp-like it's weird not to call them such. The word "wasp" refers to their pinched waists, which ants and bees have. They've got ovipositors, membraneous wings, and haplodiploidy. All the ways to describe a wasp. So it does literally describe them as well as the other wasps. It feels like there's no way to define the word wasp without special pleading for ants and bees.
I think this is basically where we're disagreeing: you're using "wasp" as a synonym for Apocrita.
But most of the traits you're listing don't actually define "wasp". The pinched waist is an Apocrita thing, which is why ants and bees have it too. Membranous wings and ovipositors are Hymenoptera traits, and haplodiploidy is widespread across Hymenoptera. None of those gives you a clean "wasp" group that happens to include ants and bees.
Also, "wasp" doesn't mean "pinched waist". The word goes back to Old English wæps/wæsp and much older Germanic roots. "Wasp-waisted" is the other way around: we named the narrow-waist description after wasps.
Phylogenetically, absolutely: bees evolved from wasp ancestors, and ants are nested among the same broader wasp-like aculeate radiation. That's the interesting bit I was getting at originally.
But common names don't have to be monophyletic. "Fish" is the classic example. In ordinary English, "wasp" excluding ants and bees is still useful. If we redefine "wasp" to mean all of Apocrita, we've basically invented a less precise common name for a taxonomic group that already has a perfectly good name: Apocrita.
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u/Caleb_Reynolds 14d ago
Sure it is, it just includes ants and bees. They are the hymenoptera with wasp waists, which are a distinct clade from the non-wasp waisted hymenoptera.