This family has historically been treated as a subfamily in the now-defunct
Spheciformes group under the family
Sphecidae. The Spheciformes included well over 200 genera, containing well over 9000 species. Revision of these taxa resulted in the restriction of the Sphecidae to what was once the subfamily Sphecinae. As a result, the former Crabroninae was elevated to family status as Crabronidae. Subsequent revision has further restricted the Crabronidae. Several of the subfamilies of the Crabronidae are often treated as families in their own right, as is true of the most recent phylogenies. Of these lineages of
Apoidea, only three were not included within Crabronidae in the past:
Ampulicidae,
Sphecidae, and
Anthophila. The following
phylogenetic tree is based on Sann
et al., 2018, which used
phylogenomics to demonstrate that both the bees (
Anthophila) and the
Sphecidae arose from within the former Crabronidae, which is therefore
paraphyletic, and which they suggested should be split into several families; the former family
Heterogynaidae nests within the
Bembicidae, as here defined. These findings differ in several details from studies published by two other sets of authors in 2017, though all three studies demonstrate a paraphyletic "Crabronidae" and the need to establish additional families. }} Further analysis by Sann
et al. in 2021 resulted in the former Entomosericini (from
Pemphredoninae) and Eremiaspheciinae being elevated to family status as
Entomosericidae and
Eremiaspheciidae, respectively. The true phylogentic placements for both small families remain unresolved but outside of either
Pemphredonidae,
Psenidae, and the lineage comprising Ammoplanidae and bees. ==Genera==