Video: Bowles: ?It?s got to be spending cuts?

Previewing the Next Big Fight

Also Sunday: The battle lines for the next fight were already being drawn before the members of the 113th Congress were sworn into office. Can Washington tackle the tough issues ahead, like raising the country's debt limit, in such a politically charged environment?? Plus: Turmoil in the Republican party as even members of the party's leadership split their votes on the final deal. Has Speaker Boehner's power diminished in the wake of this bruising fight? Joining us: Freshman Senator from Maine Angus King (I-ME), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Chair of the House Democratic Caucus Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), former head of HP and Vice Chair of the NRSC Carly Fiorina, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/50378681#50378681

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Hands-on with Toshiba 84-inch L9300 Series Ultra HD 4K LED TV

The latest to announce its entrance into the Ultra HD market with its 84-inch 4K LED TV is Toshiba. The L9300 series is also available in 65-inch or 58-inch models and will be available this summer with no word on price. According to a representative of the company, the key to Ultra HD is the processing as there won't be much native content at launch, and it has the best with its CEVO 4K Quad+Dual Core Processor and CQ Engine. The demo model on display sure impressed, but we'll hold our final judgement when the product finally ships.

Gallery: Hands-on with Toshiba 84-inch L9300 Series Ultra HD 4K LED TV

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/hands-on-with-toshiba-84-inch-l9300-series-ultra-hd-4k-led-tv/

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Japan tuna fetches record $1.7m

5 January 2013 Last updated at 02:29 ET

A single bluefin tuna has sold in Japan for 155m yen ($1.7m; ?1.05m), almost triple the record price set last year.

High bids traditionally mark the year's first auction at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.

Even the buyer, sushi chain owner Kiyoshi Kimura, who also paid out the record price last year, said the cost was "a bit high".

The sale came amid continued warnings from environmentalists that tuna stocks are dwindling and overfished.

'Encourage Japan'

This year's record-breaking fish was caught off north-eastern Japan and weighed in at 222kg (489lbs), some 47kg lighter than last year's prize-winner, which fetched 56m yen.

The prices do not necessarily reflect quality or size and are more linked to publicity and setting the tone for the business year.

The auction at the market - which trades millions of dollars of products daily and is a popular tourist destination - began at 05:00 local time.

Mr Kimura immediately carted his purchase off to a nearby branch of his Sushi Zanmai chain.

He said he wanted to "encourage Japan" with his bid.

The price works out at about $7,600 per kg ($3,500/lb).

Japan consumes more than half of the world's bluefin catch.

New figures to be released on Monday are expected to show a continued decline in Pacific bluefin stocks.

Amanda Nickson, of the Pew Environmental Group's global tuna conservation campaign, told Associated Press news agency: "Everything we're hearing is that there's no good news for the Pacific bluefin. We're seeing a very high value fish continue to be overfished."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20919306#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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ONC and "Health IT Safety: HIT Patient Safety - Health Care Renewal

[Note: this essay contains many hyperlinks. They can be right-clicked and opened in a separate tab or window.]

I've been meaning to write more on the just-before-Christmas, Friday afternoon, minimal-visibility release of the ONC report I'd written about in my Dec. 23, 2012 post "ONC's Christmas Confessional on Health IT Safety: HIT Patient Safety Action & Surveillance Plan for Public Comment."?? (The ONC report itself is available at this link in PDF.)

The Boston Globe and Globe staff writer Chelsea Conaboy, however, have beaten me to the punch in the Jan. 3, 2013 article "Federal government releases patient safety plan for electronic health records", link below.

('Lords of Kobol', of course, is a pun.? They were fictional gods in a sci-fi series from the 1970's and a remake a few years ago, but in my circles the term is used satirically and derisively to reflect people expressing inappropriate overconfidence in - and perhaps worship of - computers.?? Cobol, the COmmon Business-Oriented Language, is one of the oldest programming languages and was the major programming language of the merchant computing sector, including business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.)

First, I do want to reiterate what I'd mentioned in my earlier post:? the new ONC report is a sign of progress, in terms of a government body explicitly recognizing the social responsibilities incurred by conducting the mass human subjects experiment of national health IT.? However, I also wrote:

... [The ONC report] is still a bit weak in acknowledging the likely magnitude of under-reporting of medical errors, including HIT-related, in the available data, and the issue of risk vs. 'confirmed body counts' as I wrote at my recent post "A Significant Additional Observation on the PA Patient Safety Authority Report -- Risk".

The Globe quoted a number of people involved the health IT debate, and I am now commenting on their Jan. 3 article:

Federal government releases patient safety plan for electronic health records
Boston Globe

01/03/2013 11:16 AM???

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

The federal office in charge of a massive rollout of electronic health records has issued a plan aimed at making those systems safer by encouraging providers to report problems to patient safety organizations.

Though some in the field say it doesn?t go far enough, others said the plan is an important step for an office whose primary role has been cheerleader for a technology that has the potential to dramatically improve health care in the United States but that may come with significant risks.

A major issue at the heart of the controversy is the fact that, admittedly, nobody knows the magnitude of the risks - in large part due to systematic impediments to knowing.? This has been admitted by organizations including the Joint Commission (link), U.S. FDA (link; albeit in an "internal memo" never intended for public view, and discovered only through the hard work of Center for Public Integrity investigative reporter Fred Schulte when he was at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund), Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies (link, quoted at midsection of post), and others.?

I have made the claim that when you don't know the level of harm of an intervention in healthcare, and there are risk management-relevant case reports of dangers, you don't go gung-ho and start a national-scale implementation with penalties for non-adopters, and then decide to study safety, quality, usability etc.? You determine safety first in more controllable and constrained environments.? Anything else is, as I wrote, putting the cart before the horse (link).

You also certainly don't dismiss risk management-relevant case reports from credible observers as "anecdotal", the common refrain of hyperenthusiasts and (incompetent) scientists who conflate scientific research with risk management - as a researcher from Down Under eloquently observed in the Aug. 2011 guest post "From a Senior Clinician Down Under: Anecdotes and Medicine, We are Actually Talking About Two Different Things."

?Back to the Globe:

A year ago, the Institute of Medicine issued a report urging the federal government to do more to ensure the safety of electronic health records. It highlighted instances in which the systems were linked to patient injury, deaths, or other unsafe conditions.

The report suggested creating an independent body to investigate problems with electronic records and to recommend fixes, similar to how the National Transportation Safety Board investigates aviation accidents.

Instead, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology delegated various monitoring and data collection duties to existing federal offices, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ].

The problem is that AHRQ is a research agency (as its name suggests), has no regulatory authority nor any experience in regulation, and most clinicians have never heard of it.? In effect, this ONC recommendation is lacking teeth, even compared to the relatively milquetoast recommendations of IOM itself (as I wrote about in a Nov. 2011 post "IOM Report - 'Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care' - Nix the FDA; Create a New Toothless Agency").

The [ONC] office has asked patient safety organizations, which work with doctors and hospitals to monitor and analyze medical errors, to add health IT to their agendas. Data from the organizations would be aggregated by the agency, but reporting by doctors and hospitals is completely voluntary.? [A prime example of what I term an extraordinary regulatory accommodation afforded the health IT industry - ed.]

Now we're into septic shock blood pressure-level weakness. Here is PA Patient Safety Authority Board Member Cliff Rieders, Esq. on mandatory, let alone voluntary reporting. From ?Hospitals Are Not Reporting Errors as Required by Law", Philadelphia Inquirer, pg. 4, http://articles.philly.com/2008-09-12/news/24991423_1_report-medical-mistakes-new-jersey-hospital-association-medication-safety:
??

... Hospitals don?t report serious events if patients have been warned of the possibility of them in consent forms, said Clifford Rieders, a trial lawyer and member of the Patient Safety Authority?s board.

He said he thought one reason many hospitals don?t want to report serious events is that the law also requires that patients be informed in writing within a week of such problems. So, if a hospital doesn?t report a problem, it doesn?t have to send the patient that letter. [Thus reducing risk of litigation, and, incidentally, potentially infringing on patients' rights to legal recourse - ed.]

Rieders says the agency has allowed hospitals to determine for themselves what constitutes a serious event and the agency has failed to come up with a solid definition in six years.

Fixing this ?is not a priority,? he added.

To expect hospitals to voluntarily report even a relevant fraction of mistakes and near-misses out of pure altruism, or permit their clinicians to do so, with the inherent risks to organizational interests such reporting entails, is risible.

The near-lack of reporting by most health IT sellers and hospitals in the already-existing FDA Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database is substantial confirmation of that; the fraction of reports in MAUDE, however, are hair-raising.? See my Jan. 2011 post "MAUDE and HIT Risks: What in God's Name is Going on Here?" for more on that issue.

Here's an example of what happens to 'whistleblowers', even those responsible for system development and safety: "A Lawsuit Over Healthcare IT Whistleblowing and Wrongful Discharge."

ONC's recommendations thus in my opinion reflect bureaucratic window dressing, designed to create progress - but progress that can probably be measured in microns.

?There was no evidence that a mandatory program was necessary,? Jodi Daniel, the [ONC] office?s director of policy and planning, said in an interview.

Really?? See the aforementioned Philadelphia Inquirer article ?Hospitals Are Not Reporting Errors as Required by Law", as well as numerous articles on pharma and medical device industry reporting deficits such as starting at page 5 in my paper "A Medical Informatics Grand Challenge: the EMR and Post-Marketing Drug Surveillance" at this link in PDF.

There is no evidence mandatory reporting is necessary ... to someone who's either na?ve, incompetent - or persuaded, e.g. with money, to not find evidence or rationale.

The [ONC] office has been under pressure to roll out the electronic health records systems quickly while protecting patient data and making sure that the systems don?t cause problems in medical care, said Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.?

Under pressure by the health IT lobby, perhaps; but nobody else that I can think of.

?It?s this challenging chicken-and-egg problem,? he said.

No, actually, it isn't.? Patient safety must come first. This becomes clear when one considers the late 5th century BC ethical principle Primum non nocere ("first, do no harm" or "abstain from doing harm") versus the late 20th and early 21st century IT-hyperenthusiast credo I've expressed as "Cybernetik ?ber Alles"? ("Computers above all"). Under C?A, the computer has more rights than the patients, and the IT industry receives extraordinary regulatory accommodation to sloppy practices that no other healthcare or mission-critical non-healthcare sector enjoys.

I sent Dr. Halamka a set of arguments such as I make here, and a picture of a health IT 'chicken', my deceased mother in her death robes:

I received back a "thank you for the views" message - but no condolences.? (It occurs that I have rarely if ever received condolences from any senior HIT-hyperenthusiast Medical Informatics academic or government official to whom I've mentioned my mother.? Not to play amateur psychologist, but I believe it reflects the level of disdain or even hatred felt by these people towards health IT iconoclasts/patient's rights advocates.)

The plan, which is subject to public comment through Feb. 4, ?is a reasonable start,? in part because it puts more pressure on hospitals and doctors to monitor safety, Halamka said.

As I expressed to Dr. Halamka, we are in agreement on that point.

The government would have risked stifling innovation in the industry if it had opted instead to require the kinds of tests and review by the Food and Drug Administration that new medical devices and drugs must go through, he said.

To that, I mention here (as I did in my email to him) my response to this industry meme, as I had expressed it at Q&A after my August 2012 keynote address to the Health Informatics Society of Australia:

... I had a question from the audience [after my talk], from fellow blogger Matthew Holt of the Health Care Blog.? (I've had some online debate with him before, such as in the comment thread at my April 2012 post here.)

Matthew asked me a somewhat hostile question (perhaps in retaliation for the thrashing he received at the end of my May 2009 post on the WaPo's HIT Lobby article here), that I was well prepared for, expecting a question along these lines from the seller community, actually.? The question was preceded by a bit of a soliloquy of the "You're trying to stop innovation through regulation" type, with a tad of Merck/VIOXX ad hominem thrown in (I ran Merck Research Labs' Biomedical libraries and IT group in 2000-2003).

His question was along the lines of - you were at Merck; VIOXX was bad; health IT allowed discovery of the VIOXX problem by Kaiser several years before anyone else; you're trying to halt IT innovation via demanding regulation of the technology thus harming such capabilities and other innovations.

The audience was visibly unsettled.? Someone even hollered out their disapproval of the question.

My response was along the lines that:

• VIOXX was certainly not Merck at its best, but regulation didn't stop Merck from "revolutionizing" asthma and osteoporosis via Singulair and Fosamax;
• That I'm certainly not against innovation; I'm highly pro-innovation;
• That our definitions of "innovation" in medicine might differ, in that innovation without adherence to medical ethics is not really innovation.? It is exploitation.

I stand by that assessment.

More from the Globe article:

There is little good research into how the systems improve health care and there are big obstacles to fixing even the known problems, said Ross Koppel, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies hospital culture and medication errors.

Some developers require providers to sign nondisclosure agreements before using their systems, and the safety plan does not prohibit such gag clauses.? [Note: I wrote on this issue here, and in a published July 2009 JAMA letter to the editor "Health Care Information Technology, Hospital Responsibilities, and Joint Commission Standards" here - ed.]? While the plan addresses reporting of known problems, Koppel said it will not help researchers and developers understand problems that go unnoticed but that may be causing real patient harm.?

?We only know the tip of the iceberg? about how electronic health records affect patient care, said Koppel, who was an official reviewer for the Institute of Medicine report.

As per the title of this blog post, we are in a dark place, ethically, when a PhD sociologist who's never taken the Oath of Hippocrates (to my knowledge) appears to express more concern for patient safety and patient's rights than a Harvard physician-informatics Key Opinion Leader such as Dr. Halamka.

Koppel said the mantra of the Office of the National Coordinator has been that more health IT leads to better health care. ?It probably is better than paper,? he said, ?but it could be so much better than it is.?

I agree, but with caveats.? I opine that bad health IT is likely worse for patients than a good, well-staffed paper based system.? For instance, the former can cause systematic dangers that even a bad paper system cannot, such as tens of thousands of prescription errors (see my Nov, 2011 post "Lifespan Rhode Island: Yet another health IT 'glitch' affecting thousands - that, of course, caused no patient harm that they know of - yet") or mass privacy breaches (see the current 30 or so posts on that issue at this blog query link: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/medical record privacy).

On good health IT and bad health IT from my teaching site "Contemporary Issues in Medical Informatics: Good Health IT, Bad Health IT, and Common Examples of Healthcare IT Difficulties" at http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/:

Good Health IT ("GHIT") is IT that provides a good user experience, enhances cognitive function, puts essential information as effortlessly as possible into the physician?s hands, keeps eHealth information secure, protects patient privacy and facilitates better practice of medicine and better outcomes.?

Bad Health IT ("BHIT") is IT that is ill-suited to purpose, hard to use, unreliable, loses data or provides incorrect data, causes cognitive overload, slows rather than facilitates users, lacks appropriate alerts, creates the need for hypervigilance (i.e., towards avoiding IT-related mishaps) that increases stress, is lacking in security, compromises patient privacy or otherwise demonstrates suboptimal design and/or implementation.

?

The Boston Globe article concludes:

Ashish Jha, associate professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health and a member of the panel that drafted the Institute of Medicine report, said he wants doctors to be able to report problems -- errors in medication lists, for example -- in real-time so they can be found and fixed quickly. The safety plan does not require systems to have that capability, but Daniel said her office could soon add such a requirement for products that receive federal certification.

The bigger problem is that health care as a whole needs a better way of tracking patient safety, Jha said. Monitoring issues caused by electronic health records ?should be a part of it, and then we can actually know if this is a small, medium or large contributor to patient safety issues,? he said. ?But we don?t know that.?

I agree with Dr. Jha, but the IT sellers and healthcare organizations will (legitimately) claim that adding real-time error reporting/forwarding to their products will be extremely resource-intensive.

I have an alternate approach that will require little effort on the part of the sellers and user organizations.

• Post a message at the sign-in screen of all health IT along the lines that "This technology is experimental, adopted willingly by [organization] although not rigorously vetted for safety, reliability, usability, nor fitness for purpose, and thus you use it at your own risk.? If problems occur, report them to the following" ...

"The following" could include a list of alternatives such as I wrote in my Aug. 2012 post "Clinicians: How to Document the EHR Screens You Encounter That Cause Concern."

... When a physician or other clinician observes health IT problems, defects, malfunctions, mission hostility (e.g., poor user interfaces), significant downtimes, lost data, erroneous data, misidentified data, and so forth ... and most certainly, patient 'close calls' or actual injuries ... they should (anonymously if necessary if in a hostile management setting):

• Inform their facility's senior management, if deemed safe and not likely to result in retaliation such as being slandered as a "disruptive physician" and/or or being subjected to sham peer review (link).

• Inform their personal and organizational insurance carriers, in writing. Insurance carriers do not enjoy paying out for preventable IT-related medical mistakes. They have begun to become aware of HIT risks. See, for example, the essay on Norcal Mutual Insurance Company's newsletter on HIT risks at this link. (Note - many medical malpractice insurance policies can be interpreted as requiring this reporting, observed occasional guest blogger Dr. Scott Monteith in a comment to me about this post.)

• Inform the State Medical Society and local Medical Society of your locale.

• Inform the appropriate Board of Health for your locale.

• If applicable (and it often is), inform the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) of your state or region. Example: in Pennsylvania, the QIO is "Quality Insights of PA."

• Inform a personal attorney.

• Inform local, state and national representatives such as congressional representatives. Sen. Grassley of Iowa is aware of these issues, for example.

See the actual post for an idea about clinicians seeking indemnification when forced by healthcare organizations to use bad health IT.? I can attest to actually seeing HIT policies that call for "human resources actions" if clinicians refuse to use HIT, or cannot learn to use it at a sufficient pace.

(Left out of this reiteration is the demonstration on photographing problematic EHR screens.? See the post for the details - it is easy to do, even with a commodity cellphone.)

HHS should be promoting laws on protection from retaliation upon clinicians reporting problems in good faith.

Thus, physicians, nurses and other clinicians can create needed health IT transparency and help our society discover the true level of risks of bad health IT.? They simply need the right information on what to do and where to report, bypassing the ONC office and, in the spirit of medicine, taking such matters into their own hands in the interests of patient care and medical ethics.

I also made recommendations to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority on how known taxonomies of health IT-related medical error can be used, and need to be used, to promote error reporting in common formats.? Slides from my presentation to the Authority entitled "Asking the Right Questions:? Using Known HIT?Safety Issues?to?Improve Risk Reporting and Analysis", given in July 2012 at their invitation, are at http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/PA_patient_safety_Jul2012.ppt

Finally, another sign of progress:? unlike the HITECH Act, this new ONC plan is open to public comment.

-- SS

Source: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/01/when-sociologists-uphold-hippocratic.html

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Fliers likely to see higher fares, fewer airlines, more fees

3 hrs.

A. Pawlowski , NBC News contributor

Well, that didn't take long. Just four days into the new year, United Airlines and its Star Alliance partner Air Canada have launched the first attempted airfare increase of 2013.

The carriers are attempting?to hike more than 1 million fares across their?system, reports Rick Seaney, airfare analyst and CEO of FareCompare.com. The increase is between $2 and $5 each way.

As of Friday afternoon, Delta matched United's fares, and "there has been minimal matching by American Airlines and US Airways," according to FareCompare.

Uncertainty often looms large when air travelers turn their calendars to January.?Will airfares keep climbing? What new fees will airlines come up with? Is merger mania about to engulf more carriers?

Seaney and other air travel experts weighed in on the developments that may shape your flying experience in 2013.

Airfare trends
There were seven attempted?domestic airfare hikes in 2012 and that number will likely grow slightly this year, which should raise ticket prices about 7 percent or so, Seaney said.

But some routes may see bargains. Expect Southwest Airlines to try to expand over water, with Hawaii on the carrier?s radar, Seaney added. It may even try to fly to parts of Canada, he predicted.

?As Southwest tries to become more like a legacy airline, the legacy airlines are trying to become more like Southwest. So it?s sort of a strange thing that?s going on,? Seaney said.

International fares will still be expensive because of fuel surcharges, but globetrotters may see some price breaks if they depart from U.S. cities where foreign carriers are expanding their service, said George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com. Turkish Airlines is starting to fly from Houston this spring and that?s putting downward pressure on international airfares in that region, Hobica said.

Possible merger between American Airlines and US Airways
All of the travel experts who talked with NBC News said the merger ? which would reduce the number of U.S. legacy carriers to three???would likely lead to higher airfares and cuts in capacity.

?It?s a bad thing for travelers. Any time that competition is eroded, consumers lose,? said Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance.

Still, an announcement appears imminent. The board of directors of American's parent company, AMR Corp., could vote on a merger with US Airways as soon as next week, NBCDFW.com reported.

The carrier declined to confirm whether a decision on the merger would be made then.

?We can?t comment on the timeline or our board meeting, but we remain committed in our efforts to secure the best outcome for our financial stakeholders, our people and our customers,? American Airlines said in a statement to NBC News.

If American does merge with US Airways, expect fewer flights on overlapping routes and be prepared for some computer hiccups ? similar to the glitches that plagued United Airlines last year after its merger with Continental???when the carriers try to combine their systems.

But travelers accruing frequent flier miles with either airline or those who have earned elite status have nothing to worry about, said FareCompare.com's Seaney.

?Typically, you see newly merged airlines bending over backwards to make sure all their loyal customers are taken care of,? Seaney said. ?The last thing you want to do as a merged airline is alienate your best customers. I would expect them to offer more things than they normally would as opposed to cutting back.?

The next generation of fees
With carriers demanding extra money for everything from early boarding to on-board snacks, what else can they possibly charge for? Don?t worry???the number crunchers are still coming up with new ideas.

?Every time we think that the airlines can?t think up a new fee, they surprise us,? Leocha said.

Travelers will likely see a further push to self-service at the airport, so they may be asked to check themselves in for their flight and if they don?t, they?ll pay a fee, said Hobica.

Airlines could also introduce ?disincentives? to talk with airline personnel at the airport, he added.

Another trend is airlines offering fees in bundles ? so you have the option of buying a package deal of extra services rather than purchasing them individually, Leocha said.

For example, American Airlines last month introduced ?choice? fares that bundle extras such as early boarding, one checked bag and the ability to change flights for flat fees that range from $68-$88.

The next step? Carriers will be taking those bundles and discounting them, Seaney said.

New round of passenger protections
Under the latest proposal, the government would require that airline fees be displayed through ?all sale channels,? but last month, the Department of Transportation delayed action on addressing the issue from January to May.

?The real battle now is about comparison shopping. Consumers love to comparison shop, airlines hate it and they don?t want to give the comparison shopping sites their bundles of fees,? Seaney said.

The goal is to get the carriers to release their fees so that third-party websites, such as Priceline and Travelocity, can display them in real time and dynamically as they change, Leocha said. The debate over the issue will take place this year, but he doesn?t expect any changes to be implemented until 2014.

?Nothing moves quickly in Washington,? Leocha said. ?(Still,) this has been by far the most consumer friendly Department of Transportation that we?ve ever had.?

A better flying experience
Can it be true? Will you actually enjoy flying this year? Perhaps enjoy is a strong word, but chances are you will see some improvements.

Airlines are going to take delivery of a ?boatload of new aircraft? and those planes will have mood lighting, better breathing air, more legroom and other creature comforts, Seaney noted.

?I think people will finally, for the first time in over a decade, have a little bit better flying experience,? he said.

Wi-Fi will become prevalent on most flights, for a fee, Lisa Gill, senior editor at Conde Nast Traveler, told TODAY. Also expect to see more lie-flat beds in business class on long domestic flights, she said.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/travelkit/fliers-can-expect-higher-airfares-fewer-airlines-more-fees-experts-1B7828994

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Daily Kos: Backyard Science: Arthropod Diversity Part IV ...

This diary has languished in draft form, unfinished but not forgotten, for several months. ?It was the original attempt to blog about insect diversity and it will now be the fourth diary in the arthropod diversity series. ?As always the purpose of these diaries is to provide a research for the Backyard Science group and other interested folks. ?Monitoring the changes in biodiversity caused by a changing environment requires that you know what you're looking at. ?These diaries are designed to be a tool to complement the excellent bug guide web site. ?

In this entry in the series we are taking the bull by the horns so to speak and tackling one of the really big insect orders: the Hymenoptera. ?This group currently has well over 100,000 named species (approximately 25 species for every species of mammal on earth) or about 10% of all (named) animal species. ?So there is no way they can be covered in the same level of detail as I did for the Orthoptera in the previous diary. ?Hopefully the level of coverage that is possible will still be useful. ?The material above the orange squiggle is a general introduction to the Hymenoptera, below the squiggle is detailed nitty gritty of identifying different groups.

The name Hymenoptera means membrane wing and, in an astonishing twist of fate, refers to the membranous structure of the wings. ?The wings of all Hymenoptera resemble the wings of flies and dragonflies (and several other orders) and are either transparent or translucent. ?There is no overall common name for the Hymenoptera. ?Most commonly they are listed as: ants, bees, wasps, and their relatives. ?This is an astonishingly ecologically diverse and important group. ?Although it does contain some 'pest' species this order can be considered, from an anthropocentric viewpoint, to be the most beneficial group of insects. ?Not only does the Hymenoptera contain the honeybee and other important pollinators but it also includes a great number of species used in biological control of agricultural pests.

Ants, Bees, and Wasps?

Ants represent a single family within the order, bees a group of several closely related families. ?And then there is the thorny question of wasps. ?What is a wasp? ?Entomologists can't agree exactly how the word should be applied. ?The problem is that wasp is an informal 'trash bin' taxonomic group. ?If you want to apply the term very broadly then any insect in the order Hymenoptera that isn't a bee or an ant is a wasp. ?More narrowly you could say that any member of the subgroup of the Hymenoptera called the Aculeata (Hymenoptera with stingers) that isn't an ant or bee is a wasp. ?I'm going to sit on the fence and take a middle position. ?The Aculeata is part of a larger group called the Apocrita (see below for details) - I'm going to refer to any member of the Apocrita that is not explicitly a bee or an ant as a wasp. ? Most wasps encountered by average person are going to be in the Aculeata so that is where I will focus the bulk of the diary.

Social Behavior

The Hymenoptera are renowned for their complex social behavior. ?Although the species that are eusocial (see below) make up a minority of the species the social species are enormously ecologically important and also very conspicuous. ?Naturalists, writers, and just average folk have been fascinated by the highly cooperative nature of these insects for a very long time. ?A detailed discussion of social behavior will have to wait for a different diary but I will offer a brief overview.

Sociality can be classified on the following scale. ?Non-social organisms would have no interactions with members of their own species beyond mating. ?

Subsocial - parents care for their own offspring solitarily
Communal - parental care occurs in groups but each parent cares exclusively for her own offspring.
Quasisocial - shared parental care within the group but all members of the colony reproduce
Semisocial - Only some members of the colony reproduce but which members are reproductive may change over time or the colonies may be of short duration.
Eusocial - Meets three criteria. ?Cooperative care of offspring. ?Reproductive division of labor (only some individuals reproduce). ?Multiple generations of adults in the same colony.

Eusociality has fascinated evolutionary biologists because it seemingly violates Darwinian principles. ?W.D. Hamilton worked out a solution 50 years ago with his theory of inclusive fitness. ?Hamilton's argument, backed up with a lot of math, was that it can be evolutionary advantageous to forgo reproduction and help related individuals reproduce under certain circumstances. ?This can be summarized as follows. ?It is evolutionarily advantageous for individual 1 to care for the offspring of individual 2 at the expense of individual 1's reproduction if the following inequality is true: ?rb>c, where b (benefit) is the increase in number of offspring that individual 2 can produce as a result of the care provided by individual 1 and c (cost) is the loss of offspring that individual 1 would have had had it not provided care to the offspring of individual 2. ?The third value, r, is a measure of how closely related individuals 1 and 2 are. ?Full siblings or a parent and an offspring have an r of 0.5. ?Unrelated individuals have an r of 0. ?Identical twins have an r of 1.0.

Thus, Hamilton's work predicts that you should see individuals forgoing reproduction to help care for other individual's offspring when one of more of the following are true: ?the individuals involved are closely related (r is high), the helping individuals have a low probability of successful reproduction even if they don't help (c is low), and/or the number of offspring an individual can produced is greatly increased through helping (b is high).

Two competing (but not necessarily mutually exclusive) hypotheses have been proposed to explain the high frequency of eusocial species in the Hymenoptera compared to other groups of animals. ?One is a genetic hypothesis based on the unusual mechanism of sex determination in all Hymenoptera. ?They are haplodiploid. ?Males are haploid (have only a single set of chromosomes) and develop from unfertilized eggs. ?Females are diploid and develop from fertilized eggs. ?One consequence of this is that full sisters in this situation share an unusually high proportion of their genes (75% as opposed to 50% in a 'normal' system) and are thus in a sense more closely related to their sisters than to their daughters. ?So r is unusually high among related females in the Hymenoptera.

The other hypothesis is an ecological hypothesis based on the high frequency of nesting behavior in one group of Hymenoptera, the Aculeata. ?This is the only group that has social species. ?It has been proposed that in colonially nesting species some individuals may be excluded from reproduction by social dominance. ?Their chances of reproducing on their own, away from the colony, are very low and thus their best option is to help relatives. ?So the argument here is that c is low.

Larval Biology of the Hymenoptera

One of the really cool things about insects is that so much of their ecology and evolutionary history is driven by larval biology. ?Some insects have juvenile stages (nymphs) that are similar to the adults. ?For example a juvenile grasshopper looks just like an adult grasshopper - it just lacks wings and genitalia. ?However, most insects have a larval stage that is completely different from the adult stage and a pupal stage that reorganizes the body between the two stages. ?It's as if the kids are a completely different type of life than the adults. ?I'm childless but my understanding is that the parents of teenagers often feel this way. ?However in insects this more than just a saying - it is literally true.

Larval characteristics often strongly influence adult biology. ?Adults are more mobile and can seek out appropriate places to lay eggs where the larvae can thrive. ?In the Hymenoptera the evolution of larval form has resulted in some really fascinating phenomena in the adults such as: parasitism, gall-forming, parental care, and complex societies.

Many of the Hymenoptera are parasitoids. ?The larvae live inside their hosts (insects or spiders) and eventually kill them. ?The adult females will deposit eggs on the host. ?Adults of these species are not parasites. ?When a group is called parasitic later in the diary it is the larvae that are parasites.

A short transition for parasitism is found in species in which the females capture prey and provide to larvae in nests.

Taxonomy

Bugguide splits the Hymenoptera into three groups: ?the 'Symphyta', the 'Parasitica', and the Aculeata. ?These are not given any formal taxonomic rank. ?Note that the terms 'Symphyta' and 'Parasitica' are written in quotation marks. ?This indicates that they are not what are called natural (or more technically, monophyletic) groups. ?What does this mean? ?I'll explain in the paragraph below. ?If you don't really care you can skip over it and read the descriptions of the groups below the swirly orange thing.

A natural group is a self-contained evolutionary unit. ?In other words it is all the descendants of a common ancestor. ?The original Hymenopterans were organisms that resembled the current members of the 'Symphyta'. ?One branch(the Apocrita) evolved a different body form resulted in a huge amount of evolution resulting in all the rest of the Hymenoptera. ?The 'Parasitica' and the Aculeata are both part of the Apocrita. ?Some of the 'Symphyta' are quite closely related to the 'Parasitica' and Aculeata and some are more distantly related. ?However they are all grouped together because they retain the ancestral form. ?Similarly within the 'Parasitica' there are some groups that are more closely related to the Aculeata than others. Taxonomists generally frown on groups that are not natural but they can be quite useful in a descriptive context. ?

Identification of the Hymenoptera to One of Three Major Groups in Bug Guide ('Symphyta', 'Parasitica' and Aculeata)

Thorax and abdomen broadly connected as in most insects. ?Larvae resemble caterpillars - 'Symphyta'

Thorax and abdomen with a narrow connection (may be difficult to see in living examples of robust insects such as bees). ?Apocrita ('Parasitica' and Aculeata combined).

Body form highly variable but often somewhat wasp-like. ?For the most part very small insects. ?Ovipositor may be long but is not a retractable stinger. ?Larvae are maggot-like and parasitize other arthropods or live inside plants. ?- 'Parasitca'

Body form resembles an ant, bee, or wasp. ?Ovipositor forms a retractable stinger. ?Larvae are maggot-like and are provided with food by adults in most species. - Aculeata.

The Apocrita differ from the 'Symphyta' in two ways. ?They have a very narrow connection between their thorax and abdomen. ?Technically the first section of the abdomen is fused with the thorax so the waist is actually within the abdomen but this won't be obviously without a really close look. ?In ants and many wasps this gives them a characteristic narrow 'waist'. ?Note: the waist and the back part of the middle part of the body are actually part of the abdomen. ?So to be technically correct Hymnopterists refer to the middle part of the body as the Mesosoma and the hind part as the Metasoma. ?I am going to use the terms Thorax and Abdomen although they are technically incorrect as they will be more familiar to my intended audience ?If both the thorax and the abdomen are thick and close together the waist may not be apparent without some examination. ?The other difference is that their larvae are grub like, lacking both legs and a distinct head. ?The Apocrita are divided into the Aculeata and 'Parasitica' as discussed above.

I am going to discuss these three groups in reverse order. ?Most of the Hymenoptera that the average person will encounter are members of the Aculeata. ?The 'Symphyta' can be fairly easily distinguished from other Hymenoptera and they make up a small proportion of the total species. ?As they are encountered much less frequently than the other two groups I will discuss them last. ?Other than the stinger there isn't a good single definitive and easily seen characteristic that will distinguish the Aculeata from the 'Parasitica'. ?What I would recommend is if the insect looks distinctly like an ant, bee, or wasp then start with the assumption that it is a member of the Aculeata. ?If it looks vaguely wasplike but is really tiny or has a long ovipositor or is otherwise oddly shaped you can start with the assumption it is a member of the 'Parasitica'

The Aculeata is a subgroup of the Apocrita in which the egg-laying organ (the ovipositor) is modified as a stinger. ?Eggs are laid through an opening at the base of the ovipositor which has lost its original function. ?Any member of the Aculeata, that is not a bee or an ant is definitely a wasp.

The Pronotum: A key characteristic in distinguishing groups of Aculeata and 'Parasitica'

Images in this section are all from Wikimedia Commons.

The pronotum is the part of the exoskeleton that forms the back of the insect immediately behind the head. ?In many such as beetles and grasshoppers the pronotum is a large structure that covers the entire back of the insect down to the base of the wings. ?In the Hymenoptera the pronotum is smaller and its shape is useful in distinguishing among different groups. ?In mid-size to large insects that are not covered in hair this should be fairly easy to see in a reasonable photograph.

The default situation, found in all the 'Parasitica' and Aculeata other than those mentioned below is to have a pronotum that is triangular side pieces connected by a narrow bend across the top which is generally not visible. ?So if you look at the insect from the side the pronotum will appear triangular with one point extending back to the base of the wings. ?From the top in these insects the pronotum is usually not visible as it is hidden in the neck region of the insect. ?A diagonal line sloping back and down from the neck to the base of the wings should be visible on both sides. ?The image of the paper wasp below shows the triangle clearly.

In the two different groups of Apoidea (bees and the Apoid wasps) the pronotum is narrow and is clearly set apart from the rest of the thorax to form a distinct collar. ?This is often very easy to see in the wasps (sometimes it is a different color than adjacent parts of the insect) but can be harder to see in bees. ?The picture below shows an Apoid wasp (Crabronidae) drinking water. ?The collar is immediately behind the head.
In a few other groups of Hymenoptera such as the superfamily Chalcidoidea in the 'Parasitica', the superfamily Chrysidoidea in the Aculeata and some of the Vespoidea the pronotum is wide all the way across so that it appears square when viewed from the side. ?The picture of the Chrysidid wasp below clearly shows a broad segment right behind the head of the insect.

?Groups of the Aculeata

Superfamily Chrysidoidea

This is by far the smallest of the major groups the Aculeata. ?They can be distinguished from the other groups (for the most part) by their wide pronotum with a back edge that is straight all the way across. ?There are only two families that are likely to be found. ?Members of the this superfamily are all parasitic and do not provide parental care.

Family Chrysididae - Cuckoo Wasps. ?These are small wasps that are usually bright metallic blue or green. ?Their exoskeleton is often sculptured or pitted. ?Two other groups of Hymenoptera could be mistaken for Cuckoo Wasps. ?Several different families within the Chalcidoidea (a superfamily in the 'Parasitica') often have metallic colors and one (the Perilampidae) has similar pitting/sculpturing of the exoskeleton. ?Chalcidoids have a similar shape of pronotum to Cuckoo Wasps but they differ in two key respects. ?First Chalcidoids are generally smaller although there is some overlap in size. ?Secondly the wings of Chalcidoids have almost no veins in them. ?The other group are the Sweat Bees (Halictidae). ?Some sweat bees have bright metallic coloration but they will have more hair and more veins in the their wings.

Family Bethylidae - Small black wasps that superficially resemble ants. ?Females are often wingless. ?Could be mistaken for many families in the 'Parasitica' but the elongate head and body are characteristic.

Superfamily Apoidea 1: Apoid Wasps ?This very large group was formerly considered a single family, the Sphecidae. ?Studies have resulted in the split of this group into multiple families. ?Two of the three families listed in Bugguide are likely to be encountered. ?Body form is quite variable but all should be recognizeable by the collar-like pronotum. ?Almost all of these wasps have nests and bring insects or spiders to the nests as food for their larvae. ?The type of prey and nest are typical of each subfamily.

Mostly solitary insects but some build nests in groups without cooperation in rearing of offspring. ?Some tropical species are social.

Family Crabronidae - Contains about 90% of the species in North America. ?Highly variable in color but many of them have coloration resembling that of a bee or yellow jacket. ?The most famous species in this family are the Cicada Killers in the genus _ Sphecius_, very large wasps of formidable appearance that prey on cicadas. ?Most Crabronids nest in the ground and are moderately heavy bodied but the organ pipe mud dauber builds mud nests (resembling organ pipes) above ground and is a more slender insect.

Family Sphecidae - Thread-waisted wasps. ?A much smaller but distinctive and commonly seen family. ?The obvious characteristic is the extremely long narrow waist attaching the abdomen to the rest of the body. ?Contains both mud-daubers and ground nesters. ?Most commonly all black but color is variable.

Superfamily Apoidea 2: Bees ?The bees are a very large and successful group. ?They are fairly heavy-bodied Hymenoptera with lots of hair. ?The hairs are branched.

Most bee species are not social, although all bees, except for species that lay their eggs in the nests of other bees, care for their offspring in nests. ?Social behavior has evolved many times in within the bees which makes them a group of particular interest to evolutionary biologists. ?Many of the solitary bees have nests that occur in aggregations (many nests close to one another but not physically connected) or colonies (nests have a common entrance but each female has her own nest and there is no sharing of parental care). ?Most bees collect pollen to feed their larvae.

One family, the Mellitidae is uncommon and will not be covered.

Three of the remaining families are solitary bees that mostly nest in the ground. ?They are:

Family Andrenidae - Mining Bees. ?Dark brown bees that more or less look like a honey bee except for the color. ?Nest in tunnels in the ground, often in colonies

Family Colletidae ?- Yellow-faced Bees and Plasterer Bees. ?Ground nesters. ?Plaster Bees are hairy with dark and light bands on the abdomen. ?Often fairly light colored. ?Yellow-faced bees are largely hairless and look more wasp-like. ?They have distinct yellow marks on their faces.

Family Megachilidae - Leaf cutting Bees. ?Stout and fairly dark bees with yellow or red markings. ?Leaves are used to line the walls of the nest (in ground or in wood). ?Pollen is carried on the underside of the body rather than on the legs.

The next family is the Halictidae or Sweat Bees although only some of the species are attracted to perspiration. ?They are small to midsize bees that are quite variable in color. ?Many are dark but some have 'typical' bee and wasp banding and others are partly or completely metallic green.

These bees nest in the ground and are frequently colonial. ?Simple social behavior has evolved several times in this family.

The remainder of the bees are in the family Apidae which includes all the highly social bees as well as others. ?Honey bees and Bumble Bees are highly social. ?Bumble bees nest in the ground in small annual colonies. Carpenter bees are either solitary or primitively social and have nests in wood. ?Small Carpenter Bees resemble Halictid bees while large Carpenter bees resemble bumble bees (some large Carpenter Bees are very large indeed) but the tops of their abdomens are hairless and shiny. ?Cuckoo bees are wasplike mostly hairless bees that lay their eggs in the nests of other bees. ?There are other solitary members of this family that look like Honey and/or Bumble bees in a general sense.

Superfamily Vespoidea ?This group is more or less a grab-bag of families that do not belong in the other groups and thus these families may not all be closely related. ?Some families are parasitic while others care for their offspring. ?Two families have highly social species. ?We will only consider seven of the eleven families listed in bugguide. ?The rest are rare and not likely to be encountered.

Family Scoliidae - Large hairy wasps. ?Distinctly wasplike in shape but with much more hair than most wasps. ?Parasites of beetle larvae.

Family Tiphiidae - Medium-sized parasitic wasps. ?This is a hard group to characterize. ?Many are all dark and often have the segmentation of the abdomen more apparent than in most wasps. ?Others are banded black and yellow and superficially resemble wasps in other families. ?Some have wingless females that look vaguely like ants.

Family Bradynobaenidae - These wasps resemble the velvet ants and were formerly classified with them. ?If you have what you think is a velvet ant you might try this family as well.

Family Mutilidae - Velvet Ants - Parasitic wasps with winged males and wingless females. ?Resemble large hairy ants and are often very brightly colored. ?Females have a very painful sting (so I'm told). ?Females are seen much more often than males.

Family Pompilidae - Spider Wasps - Solitary wasps that capture prey and care for their offspring in nests. ?Therefore similar in ecology to the Sphecoid wasps but similar in appearance to the Vespidae. ?Have long hind legs, usually a dark body and frequently dark wings. ?Medium-sized to very large wasps. ?The western 'tarantual hawks' are very large spectacular insects.

Family Formicidae - Ants - This is one of the most familiar groups of Hymenoptera and indeed of all insects. ?All ants are eusocial and live in long term colonies, some of which are very large. ?Non-reproductive ants and wingless and the winged reproductives tear off their wings when they found colonies. ?Although ants are familiar insects there are a number of other insects that resemble them. ?Ants have elbowed antennae. ?They also have one or two small bumps coming of the back of the waist (i.e. between the thorax and abdomen).

Family Vespidae - Social Wasps and Relatives - This is the group that first comes to mind when you think of wasps. ?There are several subfamilies of solitary wasps in the Vespidae. ?They are variable in appearance but generally look something like a yellow jacket or hornet. ?They build nest in the ground, out of mud, or of paper with each female caring for her own offspring but bringing them a characteristic type of insect prey. ?The Eumarinae - Potter and Mason Wasps is by far the most common subfamily of solitary Vespids. ?The two social subfamilies are the Polistinae and Vespinae. ?The Polistinae are the paper wasps. ?They have relatively small colonies that live in a paper structure with open cells in which the larvae are found. ?North American paper wasps are most usually brown and yellow although there is some variation. ?They are slender insects with a very pronounced waist. ?The Vespinae are the yellow jackets and hornets. ?They are black alternating with either white or yellow. ?Their colonies occur either in the ground (yellow jackets) or in enclosed, roughly spherical paper colonies (aerial yellow jackets and hornets).

All of the Apocrita (narrow-waisted Hymenoptera) that aren't Aculeata (stinging Hymenoptera) belong to the informal group known as the 'Parasitica'. ?The name derives from the fact that most of the insects in this group are parasitoids. ?Most species lay eggs on or in their hosts, most commonly larval insects, the larvae live inside the host eventually killing it once the larval or pupal stage is complete. ?

The Parasitica is a huge group of insects. ?In addition to the parasitoids it includes some species that primarily feed on plants such as the fig wasps and the oak gall wasps. ?Many of the parasitic species are used as biological control of pest insects. ?However they are generally not conspicuous insects. ?Although a few, such as some of the Ichneumonid wasps are quite sizable, most are small insects. ?Typically they are around the size of a fruit fly and some are among the smallest known insects. ?For the most part they do not occur in groups or seek out humans, our food or our structures. ?So we don't tend to notice them.

Major groups of the 'Parasitica'

There are no fewer than 10 superfamilies within the 'Parasitica'. ?We will divide them into three groups based on diversity.

Group 1. Highly abundant and diverse insects - should be considered first.

1. Have long threadlike antennae with at least 16 segments apiece, usually slender insects sometimes with a long conspicuous ovipositor. ?Wings have substantial venation. ?Highly variable in size with some large species - Superfamily Ichneumonoidea.

This group is by far the most likely to be encountered within the 'Parasitica'. There are two families: the Ichneumonidae and the Braconidae. ?The two families are very similar, differing only in the venation pattern of the wings. ?The Braconidae are exclusively small insects while some of the Ichneumonidae get fairly large. The Ichneumonidae is largest family of insects in North America, probably containing more species than all the rest of the 'Parasitica' combined. ?Less abundant groups with an Ichneumon body form include families in the Evanoidea, Diapriodea, and the Proctotrupoidea.

2. Small insects with elbowed antennae. ?Have a stockier body than the Ichneumonoidea. ?Little or no wing venation. ?Variable in shape but generally stockier insects than the Ichneumenoidea. ?Highly variable in color, often with iridescence. - Superfamily Chalcidoidea.

This group contains no fewer than 17 families in North America. ?Almost all of the Chalcidoidea are very small insects and will be next to impossible to identify without access to a high quality microscope. ?Two of the families, the Mymaridae and the Trichogrammatidae, are specialists that parasitize the eggs of other insects and spiders and are among the smallest of all known insects. ?Some adults are less than 1 mm long. ?We'll briefly mention the most numerous families as well as a few of the more distinctive and easily recognized ones.

The Eulophidae and the Pteromalidae are the two largest families. ?They are very similar in general appearance. ?Eulophids have four segmented feet (4 tarsal segments) while Pteromalids have five segments.

There are several families that are more easily recognized. ?The Torymidae have long ovipositors. The Chalcididae and Leucospidae are relatively large for Chalcidoidea. ?Both families have a greatly enlarged femur on each of the hind legs giving them the look of 'popeye arms'.

3. Small insects with threadlike antennae. ?Usually have an oval abdomen and a hunched back and little wing venation. ?Superfamily Cynipoidea

This is a large and common group. ?Almost all the species are in the family Cynipidae, the gall wasps. ?The larvae live in plant growths (galls) that are induced by the insects. ?Most commonly these galls are found on oaks. ?Each species of gall wasp has a characteristic type of gall on a particular host plant.

Group 2 - Common insects but much less likely to be encountered than group 1.

4. Variable sized insects with threadlike antennae and wings with veins. ?Abdomen attached to rest of body fairly high on the back of the thorax. ?Many species resemble members of the Ichneumonoidea but have a pronounced neck separating the head and thorax - Superfamily Evanoidea

This group is somewhat smaller than the previous three. ?It contains two families, the Aulacidae and the Gasteruptiidae, that closely resemble Ichneumon wasps but have the head attached to the thorax with a distinct neck. ?A third family, the Evaniidae, are bizarre, unmistakeable insects that are parasitoids of cockroach egg cases. ?They are black and spider like with a tiny abdomen that hangs of the back of the large thorax like a flag, giving them the common name of Ensign wasps.

5. Small, somewhat elongate, shiny black insects with long threadlike antennae that arise from shelf-like projection in the middle of the face- Superfamily Diaprioidea

There is only a single family, the Diapriidae.

6. Tiny black insects with elbowed antennae that arise very low on the face and flattened abdomens. ?Superfamily Platygasteroidea

There is only a single family, the Platygasteridae.

7. Tiny black insects similar to the Platygasteroidea but with a more rounded abdomen. - Superfamily Ceraphronoidea

8. Superfamily Proctotrupoidea. ?Contains two distinctive families that are considered separately below

Very large (two inches!) with a extremely long, thin abdomen (superficially resembles a damselfly) - family Pelecinidae. ?Only a single species in eastern North America.

Small slender insects with long threadlike antennae and a spindle-shaped (i.e. tapered at both ends) abdomen that is often a different color than the rest of the body. ?In many species the tail end of the abdomen bends downward as well as tapering. - family Proctotrupidae.

Group 3. ?The remaining two superfamilies, the Stephanoidea and the Trigonaloidea are rare insects that are unlikely to be encountered.

The 'Symphyta' are the sawflies and horntails. ?This is a fairly small group of organisms relative to the other two. ?They are vaguely wasplike in appearance but the thorax and abdomen are broadly joined (i.e. there is no waist like you clearly see in ants or in paper wasps, etc.). ?Unfortunately I am not familiar with the Symphyta. ?There are quite a few families but most of them are very small with only a handful of species in North America.

Group-living larval sawflies in Ecuador

By far the most common family are the Tenthredinidae. ?These are mid-sized insects that resemble a reasonably heavy-bodied wasp with a broad head. ?The antennae are moderately long and thread-like. ?The larvae are often plant pests.

A particularly striking family in the 'Symphyta' is the Siricidae or Horntails. ?These are large insects (up to two inches) with a cylindrical body and an abdominal spine. ?The larvae feed on wood.

The Argidae are stout-bodied insects with distinctive three-segmented antennae with the first segment being very long.

The Diprionidae are the Conifer Sawflies. ?They are stout and have plumed antennae. ?Common in areas where in conifers are common.

To finish off here's a couple of bits of zany British humour featuring wasps in minor roles (you will have to listen for a couple of minutes in each case to get to the wasp reference).

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/04/1176467/-Backyard-Science-Arthropod-Diversity-Part-IV

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Video: Arrests made in India rape case

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50356653/

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