The Atlantic Forest is one of the most important areas of biodiversity in the world, but it has been largely replaced with agropastoral areas and at the present only 12.5 % of the original cover remains. Despite the ecological importance of insects, few studies have been used in conservation approaches for the Atlantic Forest, mainly due to a great taxonomic impediment. A group quite ecologically important but deeply neglected includes parasitoid wasps that control a great number of invertebrates, like tiphiid wasps that are parasitoids of underground coleopteran larvae. The present study aimed to estimate Tiphiidae species richness and diversity in 15 patches of a highly fragmented Atlantic Forest region, using factors that drive the diversity pool from a metacommunity, such as immigration and speciation probabilities. The parameters were estimated using the Neutral Biodiversity Theory, which is based on the total ecological equivalence of species at the same trophic level. Diversity values were molded to the area size, the immigration probabilities, and/or the speciation probability. Eight genera and 460 individuals of Thynninae, Myzininae and Tiphiinae were collected. Variation in species richness, estimated by both rarefaction and first-order jackknife methods, was explained by patch size and by immigration and speciation probabilities. These variables also explained the variation in Shannon diversity and species evenness. Variations in species richness and diversity of Tiphiidae are strongly associated with neutral processes, but they are also influenced by forest fragmentation and intensive agricultural activities.

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Upa Kimsey is a poorly known genus of Tiphiidae with seven species. This genus has records in forest areas and in this paper we present new records to four species. All specimens were collected by malaise traps in four areas of Atlantic Rain Forest and three of Atlantic Semi-deciduous forest, mainly from high and mid-elevations. The new records indicate that species of Upa are not as rare as others genera of Tiphiidae, which are virtually unknown in many Neotropical regions.

Wax production is one of the stingless bee activities that is related with nest building. We studied wax gland size in workers of the stingless bee Friesella schrottkyi at nine different ages: 0, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, and 20 days. In the large majority of workers, we observed a conspicuous epithelium in abdominal tergites III, IV, and V. Our results clearly show a link between worker age and wax production in F. schrottkyi. The epithelial thickness reaches its maximum after 13 days, followed by a drastic decline in workers of 15 days old. We observed an unexpected pattern in a minority of workers, however, which showed a decline in epithelial thickness right after emergence. Even though temporal polyethism is well known in Meliponini, some individuals may not perform all the activities inside the colony; therefore, the workers with the unexpected pattern may correspond to those individuals.

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