Ichneumonidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) in Canadian Late Cretaceous amber

Dmitry S. Kopylov,Michael S. Engel,Ryan C. McKellar

doi:10.1002/mmng.201300011

Abstract

Abstract. Three new species and two new genera are described within the wasp family Ichneumonidae from Late Cretaceous (Campanian) amber collected at the Grassy Lake locality in Alberta, Canada. New taxa include Pareubaeus rasnitsyni n. gen. et sp. and P. incertus n. sp. within the subfamily Labenopimplinae, and Albertocryptus dossenus n. gen. et sp. within the subfamily Labeninae. The presence of a labenopimpline genus closely related to Eubaeus Townes within Canadian amber further supports faunal similarity between the Canadian assemblage and that recovered from Siberian amber. The records of Labeninae are the first from Mesozoic amber, and demonstrate that the subfamily was present in the Northern Hemisphere in the Late Cretaceous, as opposed to their modern, predominantly austral distribution. doi: 10.1002/mmng.201300011

Highlights

With an estimated diversity of approximately 60,000 species, and more than 23,300 described species, ichneumonids are one of the most diverse hymenopteran families in many modern ecosystems (Gauld & Bolton 1988; Wahl & Sharkey 1993; Yu et al 2005; Huber 2009; Engel & Krombein 2012)
Late Cretaceous (Turonian) New Jersey amber has been reported to contain four specimens of Ichneumonidae, but these remain undescribed (Grimaldi et al 2000), and a single specimen of an undescribed species has been figured from Early Cretaceous Burmese amber
The Late Cretaceous ichneumonid taxa recovered from Canadian amber match well with the expectations generated by both recent phylogenetic studies, and the broader fossil record of Ichneumonidae

Summary

Introduction

With an estimated diversity of approximately 60,000 species, and more than 23,300 described species, ichneumonids are one of the most diverse hymenopteran families in many modern ecosystems (Gauld & Bolton 1988; Wahl & Sharkey 1993; Yu et al 2005; Huber 2009; Engel & Krombein 2012). There have been previous reports of ichneumonids within Campanian Canadian amber (Pike 1995; Skidmore 1999; McKellar et al 2008; McKellar & Engel 2012), but the specimens have remained undescribed until now It appears as though the main reason that ichneumonids are poorly represented as fossils in the Cretaceous is their body size. C. et al.: Ichneumonidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) and not preserved (MartÌnez-Delcl×s et al 2004; McKellar & Engel 2012) This said, the compression fossil record of Cretaceous ichneumonids displays a remarkably high percentage of small forms, suggesting that small forms may have been more abundant in the Cretaceous (Kopylov 2012), and by extension, that amber may provide a relatively unbiased record in this time period

Materials and methods

Discussion