A short story on how twitter (and specifially Lu Musetti @osuc_curator) really helped a lot with a project today, despite my obvious typo on the original tweet.
I have been working on a project to redescribed Triacrus dilatus Nordmann and at the same time we are doing some fancy allometry work with them. These are fascinating beasts because according to the literature they live (and attack) with paper wasps. Wassman (1902) pointed out that they live in the nests of Polybia vicina Sauss. and later Kistner (1982) in his monster chapter (222 pages long!) "The social insects' bestiary" refer to the wasp genus as Stenopolybia.
I have been trying to find out information about that wasp for a long time, but Google was not returning many results -- a clear indication that something was sketchy, but who am I to doubt Kistner, right?
But as shown above, the name Stenopolybia is typo of the genus name Stelopolybia, which was synonymized by Carpenter (1999) with the genus Agelaia.
So, the correct name of the wasp is Agelaia vicina, a wasp used as a keystone species in southern Brazil and with its own wikipedia page.
Now, who said again that Twitter is a waste of time for academics?
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| Head and pronotum of Triacrus dilatus |
I have been trying to find out information about that wasp for a long time, but Google was not returning many results -- a clear indication that something was sketchy, but who am I to doubt Kistner, right?
But as shown above, the name Stenopolybia is typo of the genus name Stelopolybia, which was synonymized by Carpenter (1999) with the genus Agelaia.
So, the correct name of the wasp is Agelaia vicina, a wasp used as a keystone species in southern Brazil and with its own wikipedia page.
Now, who said again that Twitter is a waste of time for academics?
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