Torymidae

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Torymidae
Torymus nobilis

Torymus nobilis

Systematics
Order : Hymenoptera (Hymenoptera)
Subordination : Waist Wasps (Apocrita)
Partial order : Legimmen (Terebrantia)
Superfamily : Wood Wasps (Chalcidoidea)
Family : Torymidae
Scientific name
Torymidae
Walker , 1833
Megastigmus pistaciae

The Torymidae are a family of wasps with worldwide distribution. It includes around 1000 species, 90 of them in Germany and 60 in Switzerland.

features

They are small, winged hymenoptera, the European species between 1 and 8 millimeters in length (measured without ovipositories). Like most wasps, the Torymidae also often show metallic green, blue, bronze or purple colorations, many species are partially yellow. The body surface is mostly smooth. The antenna whip of the kneeled antennae has eleven links, the last three links forming an indistinctly separated lobe. The first flagellum, more rarely the second and third, has an annular constriction called an anellus . In the male, too, there are no elongated whorls of bristles on the whiplash. Quills are almost always pronounced on the head. The prepectus, an additional sclerite characteristic of the wasps, between the pronotum and the base of the forewings, is broadly triangular, it reaches the base of the fore hips downwards. The scutellum is broadly rounded at the back, it is longer than the metanotum . The notauli, longitudinally oriented furrows on the mesoscutum, which are present in many Hymenoptera, are clearly pronounced. The propodeum has no keels (plicae), it can be smooth or more heavily sculpted. The free abdomen (gaster or metasoma) is set off from the trunk section by a short, clear stalk (petiolus). The guest is oval in outline. In the female, the ovipositor always protrudes freely over the end of the abdomen, sometimes quite long. The tergites of segments eight and nine are separated by a distinct, membranous joint region. A pair of short, conical cerci , which insert in a joint membrane at the end of the abdomen, are very typical of the family , but these also occur in some genera of the wasps from other families.

The forewings show the typical, strongly reduced veining of the wasps. Typical for the family is a very long marginal loader with a short postmarginal loader, which is usually only a third of its length. The stigma vein is also short, but the pterostigma itself can be quite long. The hind wings are not stalked, their membrane extends to the wing joint. The legs have tarsi with five limbs, the mesotarsus shows no modifications. The coxa of the hind legs is long, usually twice to three times the length of that of the front legs. The femur of the hind legs is almost always long, occasionally thickened, it has one or more thorns on the underside. The tibia of the front legs has a long end spur curved at the end.

The larvae of the Torymidae are of the typical shape of the Legimmen larvae, i.e. short, maggot-like, white larvae without extremities, which are soft-skinned except for the firm head capsule. The antennas are small and cylindrical. The top of the head capsule has two seams that come together at the back. The mandibles are simple and single-pointed. Six rows of long hairs run across the thorax and abdomen.

Way of life

Most species in the family are parasitoids , as is typical of wood wasps . Typically they are idobionte (this means that after the parasite has laid eggs, no further growth or development of the host takes place) Parasitoids of the larvae of gall-forming insects of the families Cynipidae , Tanaostigmatidae , Eurytomidae , Cecidomyiidae , Tephritidae and Psyllidae . The others parasitize, as far as is known, in larvae and pupae of species of beetles, hymenoptera, two-winged birds and butterflies (exceptionally also others) that live hidden or hidden in hiding places, such as bee larvae in nests or herbivores living boring in seed capsules or stems of plants. Few species are egg parasitoids, some of them in the egg nests of the muzzle . Some species, such as the genus Monodontomerus , are ectoparasitoids, meaning that they feed on the host from the outside.

The species of the subfamily Megastigminae are unusual in that most of the species are not parasitoids, but have evolved into herbivores again . Most species drill into seeds of conifers within the cones , usually each larva in a single seed, whereby the species in the host choice are usually genus-specific. They form a monophyletic group with distribution in the Holarctic , including 21 megastigmus species in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Very few species are given from seeds of flowering plants of the families Rosaceae and Anacardiaceae ( e.g. pistachios ). Also within the subfamily there are parasitoid species, almost all of which live in Australia.

Partly phytophagous species are also found in the Toryminae, for example also in European species of the genus Torymus . These often occur in several host species, but they all live on the same plant species. Some species continue to feed on the vegetable gall tissue after parasitizing and killing a gall producer. Within the genus Torymus there are also species that specialize in coniferous cones , these parasitize, as far as is known, on gall mosquito larvae.

Almost nothing is known about the diet of imaginal wasps. Some species could ingest nectar.

Phylogeny and Systematics

There are 982 species in 68 genera, making it a family of wasps of medium species richness. They are common worldwide. The German species are listed in the Checklist of German chalcid wasps of the Zoologischer Staatssammlung München.

The togetherness of families and their delimitation from related families have been controversial for a long time. The differentiation from the Ormyridae family is particularly problematic . On a morphological analysis the family was monophyletic , with the Ormyridae as sister group , this position did not change with the inclusion of DNA data. In a phylogenomic analysis, in which the relationships are analyzed by comparing homologous DNA sequences, only the subfamilies Toryminae and Megastigminae were found to be monophyletic, which would make the family polyphyletic. According to a previously unpublished study by Petr Janšta, the Megastigminae would be sister groups of the Ormyridae.

The family is usually divided into two subfamilies.

  • Subfamily Toryminae
  • Subfamily Megastigminae. almost 200 species in 12 genera. distributed worldwide, distribution center in Australia. In Central Europe genus Megastigmus

The subfamily Monodontomerinae, which was previously differentiated, is now considered a tribe of the Toryminae, the former subfamily Thaumatoryminae and some other, earlier differentiated are no longer justified.

Fossil evidence

Fossil Torymidae were rarely found, the assignment of some of the described types of compression fossils (from the Miocene American deposit Florissant) is uncertain. The species Monodontomerus primaveus was described from the Baltic amber .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henri Goulet, John T. Huber: Hymenoptera of the world: an identification guide to families. Research Branch, Agriculture Canada, Publication 1894 / E, 1993. 668 pp. ISBN 0-660-14933-8
  2. ↑ Hannes Baur & Seraina Klopfstein: Ichneumonid Wasps of Switzerland. Systematics, biology, diversity, determination. Script, Natural History Museum Bern; Version 3, 2007.
  3. ↑ Udo Sellenschloh (1983): The larvae of the Torymidae - a not very rare group of the ore wasps (Chalcidoidea, Hymenoptera). New Entomological News 14: 24-28.
  4. ↑ Marie-Anne Auger-Rozenberg, Carole Kerdelhue, Emmanuelle Magnouk, Jean Turgeon, Jean-Yves Rasplus, Alain Roques (2005): Molecular phylogeny and evolution of host-plant use in conifer seed chalcids in the genus Megastigmus (Hymenoptera: Torymidae) . Systematic Entomology 31: 47-64. doi: 10.1111 / j.1365-3113.2005.00310.x
  5. ^ A. Roques, M. Skrzypczynśka (2003): Seed-infesting chalcids of the genus Megastigmus Dalman, 1820 (Hymenoptera: Torymidae) native and introduced to the West Palearctic region: taxonomy, host specificity and distribution. Journal of Natural History 37: 127-238. doi: 10.1080 / 00222930110096069
  6. ^ MWR de Vere Graham, MJ Gijswijt (1998): Revision of the European species of Torymus Dalman (Hymenoptera: Torymidae). Zoological Negotiations Leiden 317: 1-202.
  7. ↑ Torymidae. Checklist of German chalcid wasps (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea), last updated February 9, 2015
  8. ↑ John M. Heraty, Roger A. Burks, Astrid Cruaud, Gary AP Gibson, Johan Liljeblad, James Munro, Jean-Yves Rasplus, Gerard Delvare, Peter Janšta, Alex Gumovsky, John Huber, James B. Woolley, Lars Krogmann, Steve Heydon, Andrew Polaszek, Stefan Schmidt, D. Chris Darling, Michael W. Gates, Jason Mottern, Elizabeth Murray, Ana Dal Molin, Serguei Triapitsyn, Hannes Baur, John D. Pinto, Simon van Noort, Jeremiah George, Matthew Yoder (2013 ): A phylogenetic analysis of the megadiverse Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera). Cladistics 29: 466-542. doi: 10.1111 / cla.12006
  9. ↑ James B. Munro, John M. Heraty, Roger A. Burks, David Hawks, Jason Mottern, Astrid Cruaud, Jean-Yves Rasplus, Petr Jansta (2011): A Molecular Phylogeny of the Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera). PLoS ONE 6 (11): e27023. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0027023
  10. ↑ Petr Janšta: Phylogeny of parasitic wasps of Torymidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) and evolution of their life strategies. Thesis, Department of Zoology, Charles University Prague, 2014 online , therein paper V.
  11. ^ Charles T. Brues (1923): Some New Fossil Parasitic Hymenoptera from Baltic Amber. Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 58: 327-346. JSTOR 20025999

literature

  • EE Grissell: Toryminae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Torymidae): a redefinition, generic classification and annotated world catalog of species. Memoirs on Entomology, International, 2, 1995
  • Gary AP Gibson, John Theodore Huber, James Braden Woolley: Annotated Keys to the Genera of Nearctic Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera). NRC Research Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-660-16669-8 .

Web links

Commons : Torymidae  - Collection of images, videos and audio files