Hymenoptera, Linnaeus, 1758

Ortega-Blanco, Jaime, Rasnitsyn, Alexander P. & Delclòs, Xavier, 2010, A new family of ceraphronoid wasps from Early Cretaceous Álava Amber, Spain, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 55 (2), pp. 265-276 : 265-266

Hymenoptera

Parasitic Hymenoptera , the so−called “Parasitica”, is comprised predominantly of wasps with parasitoid lifestyles. Nevertheless, Parasitica is neither a monophyletic grouping nor is it exclusively composed of parasites, as some lineages evolved from being parasites into predators or phytophages ( Quicke 1997). Eggleton and Belshaw (1993) propose that parasitism evolved only once, probably in Orussidae or another close relative (e.g., see proposals in Dowton and Austin 1994; Quicke 1997; Dowton et al. 1997; Vilhelmsen 2003; Rasnitsyn et al. 2006). The earliest known parasitic wasps, the Jurassic–Cretaceous families Karatavitidae , Paroryssidae , and Ephialtitidae , had their metasoma less specialized than their descendants for laying eggs precisely in respect to the target insect host ( Rasnitsyn 1980; Rasnitsyn et al. 2006). The Jurassic family Karatavitidae has been considered recently as ancestor of all higher (parasitic and predatory) wasps, including the orussid wasps long considered as “parasitic Symphyta” ( Rasnitsyn et al. 2006).

Ceraphronoidea sensu stricto are minute parasitoid wasps, mainly endoparasitoid, of several others groups of insects. Megaspilidae and Ceraphronidae contain endo− and ectoparasitoid species ( Cooper and Dessart 1975). It is phylogenetically accepted that the ectoparasitoidism is the ground−plan state of the Apocrita , but the endoparasitoidism evolved a number of times within the group ( Dowton and Austin 1994; Sharkey 2007). Ceraphronids vary extensively in their insect host choices, but they commonly prefer hosts that are weakly concealed, and megaspilids parasite scale insects, mecopterans, fly puparia, neuropteran cocoons, and they are hyperparasites of aphids parasitized by braconids ( Masner 1993; Höller et al. 1994; Chow and Mackauer 1996). Haviland (1920) described a tertiary parasitic system where a megaspilid hyperparasitoid attacks a chalcidoid hyperparasitoid of a braconid primary parasite of an aphid.

The morphology of the new species found in Spanish amber and their placement within Ceraphronoidea strongly suggest they had a parasitic lifestyle (see Masner and Dessart 1967; Alekseev and Rasnitsyn 1981; Alekseev 1995; Peñalver and Engel 2006; Engel and Grimaldi 2009).