The Ceraphronoidea are a small
hymenoptera
Hymenoptera is a large order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are parasitic.
Females typi ...
n superfamily that includes only two families, and a total of some 800 species, though a great many species are still undescribed. It is a poorly known group as a whole, and most are believed to be
parasitoid
In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host (biology), host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionarily stable str ...
or
hyperparasitoids.
The two families are unified by several characters, the most visible of which is their wing venation is greatly reduced in a very specific and unique way; the costal and radial veins have fused so no costal cell is present, a short break occurs at the stigma, and the only vein in the wing membrane itself is the radial sector, which is short and curved, arising from the stigma.
The taxon was erected by
Alexander Henry Haliday
Alexander Henry Haliday (1806–1870, also known as Enrico Alessandro Haliday, Alexis Heinrich Haliday, or simply Haliday) was an Ireland, Irish entomologist. He is primarily known for his work on Hymenoptera, Diptera, and Thysanoptera, but wor ...
.
Some fossil families that were formerly assigned to this group have since been reassigned elsewhere including
Aptenoperissidae,
Radiophronidae and
Stigmaphronidae.
References
*Dessart, P. & Cancemi, P. 1987. Tableau dichotomique des genres de Ceraphronoidea (Hymenoptera) avec commentaires et nouvelles especies. ''Frustula Entomologica'' 7-8: 307–372.
*Johnson, N. F. & L. Musetti. 2004. Catalog of the systematic literature of the superfamily Ceraphronoidea (Hymenoptera). ''Contributions of the American Entomological Institute'' 33 (2): 1–149.
External links
Hymatol Phylogenetics
In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...
Apocrita superfamilies
Taxa named by Alexander Henry Haliday
{{Apocrita-stub