Aulacidae Schuckard, 1841

Jennings, John T., Parslow, Ben A. & Austin, Andrew D., 2018, Systematics of the parasitoid wasp genus Aulacus Jurine (Hymenoptera: Evanioidea: Aulacidae) from Australia, Zootaxa 4538 (1), pp. 1-113 : 5-6

Aulacidae Schuckard, 1841

(key references only)

Aulacus (in Evaniales) Latreille 1810 .—Schuckard 1841: 117 ( Aulacidae ); Thomson 1883: 843, 845 ( Aulacus in key); Cameron 1887: 422 ( Aulacinae ); Cresson 1887: 36, 182; Ashmead 1900: 8 ( Aulacinae ); Bradley 1901a: 28; Bradley 1901b: 319; Kieffer 1902: 10; Kieffer 1903: 347 ( Aulacinae ); Szépligeti 1903: 390; Bradley 1908: 118; Kieffer 1912: 342 ( Aulacinae ); Hedicke 1939: 1; Townes 1951: 657 ( Aulacinae ); Crosskey 1951: 284; Crosskey 1962: 380; Carlson 1979: 1111; Oehlke 1983: 439; Smith 2001: 267 (catalog); Turrisi et al. 2009: 27; Turrisi 2017: 931 (catalog).

Remarks. Aulacidae comprises two genera, Aulacus and Pristaulacus (see, for example, Smith 2001, Turrisi et al. 2009). For a recent synopsis of the systematics of the Aulacidae and taxonomic history, see Smith (2001), Jennings et al. (2004a, b), and Turrisi et al. (2009).

Aulacus was recently redefined by Turrisi et al. (2009) within a cladistic framework. Aulacus can be distinguished from Pristaulacus by the following combination of characters: occipital carina absent (present in Pristaulacus ); frons sculptured above antennal sockets (not sculptured in Pristaulacus ); tarsal claws with one weak basal process, lacking tooth-like processes along inner margin (with three to four tooth-like processes along inner margin in Pristaulacus , i.e. pectinate); petiole (metasomal T1+T2) at most as long as wide in Pristaulacus (slender, at least 2.5× as long as wide in Aulacus ) (Turrisi 2007; Turrisi et al. 2009; Watanabe et al. 2013).

Aulacidae currently comprises 264 extant species— Aulacus with 83 species and Pristaulacus with 181 species ( Turrisi 2017; Smith 2018). Turrisi (2017) recently analysed the distribution of the two genera and found that the family is represented in all zoogeographic regions except Antactica, with most species occurring in the Australian and Neotropical regions. Prior to this paper, 38% of the world Aulacus species were known from Australasia ( Turrisi 2017), but the proportion of Australasian species is now 64%. Most Australian Aulacus are from the higher rainfall, forested areas of the east coast of mainland Australia and Tasmania, with just three species recorded from south-west Western Australia and four from South Australia ( Jennings et al. 2004a, b). To date, no Aulacus have been collected from the Northern Territory.