Abstract
The biology of many Darwin wasp (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) species is poorly known. Existing museum specimens can potentially be used to get information on e.g. how species live, what they eat, and what their life cycle is. One example of this is a 1991 study by Eggleton in which he measured some rhyssine (Ichneumonidae: Rhyssinae) species, and used the results to deduce how the species likely mate. We extend this work by measuring five tropical species. We found no evidence that the males of our species scramble for females before the females emerge, which matches what was hypothesised by Eggleton. Further measurements of more species would provide information on how other species mate, and field observations of mating rhyssines would help confirm that Eggleton’s method for deducing rhyssine mating strategies gives true results.
Highlights
The Darwin wasps (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) are an extremely diverse but poorly known family, with possibly over 100000 species (Gauld et al 2002) of which only about 24000–25000 are known (Yu et al 2016; Bennet et al 2019; Roskov et al 2019)
The assumption behind the measurements was that rhyssine males often emerge from their pupas before the females and that species whose males scramble for emerging females will tend to invest in long, slender and elongated male metasomas, so as to reach females before other males
According to Gauld (1991) the male metasomas are slender in some temperate species, while most tropical rhyssine species possess shorter and stouter metasomas
Summary
The Darwin wasps (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) are an extremely diverse but poorly known family, with possibly over 100000 species (Gauld et al 2002) of which only about 24000–25000 are known (Yu et al 2016; Bennet et al 2019; Roskov et al 2019). Existing museum specimens can be used to deduce details of the biology of a species. Eggleton (1991), for example, measured the metasomas of male rhyssine wasps (Ichneumonidae: Rhyssinae) in the Natural History Museum (London) collections, and deduced how the different species mate. The assumption behind the measurements was that rhyssine males often emerge from their pupas before the females and that species whose males scramble for emerging females will tend to invest in long, slender and elongated male metasomas, so as to reach females before other males. According to Gauld (1991) the male metasomas are slender in some temperate species, while most tropical rhyssine species possess shorter and stouter metasomas
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