Darwin wasps: a new name heralds renewed efforts to unravel the evolutionary history of Ichneumonidae

Abstract

The parasitoid wasp family Ichneumonidae is arguably one of the groups for which current knowledge lags most strongly behind their enormous diversity. In a five-day meeting in Basel (Switzerland) in June 2019, 22 researchers from 14 countries met to discuss the most important issues in ichneumonid research, including increasing the speed of species discovery, resolving higher-level relationships, and studying the radiation of these parasitoids onto various host groups through time. All agreed that it is time to advertise ichneumonid research more broadly in the scientific community and thereby attract young talents to this group for which specialists are sorely lacking. In order to popularize the group, we here suggest a new name for the family, “Darwin wasps”, to reflect the pivotal role they played in convincing Charles Darwin that not all of creation could have been created by a benevolent god. We hope that the name catches on, and that Darwin wasps start buzzing more loudly across all disciplines of biology.

Mind the Outgroup and Bare Branches in Total-Evidence Dating: a Case Study of Pimpliform Darwin Wasps (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae)

“…The Ichneumonidae, or Darwin wasps ( Klopfstein et al 2019b ), is the most species-rich family of parasitoid wasps, with more than 25,000 described species ( Yu et al 2016 ), and at the same time one of the most severely understudied taxa. We focus on Pimpliformes, a monophyletic group comprising nine subfamilies: Acaenitinae, Collyriinae, Cylloceriinae, Diacritinae, Diplazontinae, Orthocentrinae, Pimplinae, Poemeniinae, and Rhyssinae ( Wahl and Gauld 1998 ; Quicke 2014 ; Klopfstein et al 2019b ). Pimpliformes are especially interesting from a biological perspective since they cover nearly the entire diversity of hosts and parasitoid strategies known from ichneumonids ( Broad et al 2018 ).…”

Supplementary material 1 from: Berry TR, van Noort S (2020) Revision of the endemic Afrotropical genus Tetractenion (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae) with an identification key to genera of Banchinae for the region. ZooKeys 1007: 49-84. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1007.55543

“…Although there have been recent comprehensive long-term inventory surveys conducted across many parts of Africa with many rich, recently collected bulk samples that still need to be sorted, in reality, comprehensive sampling of Ichneumonidae in the region has been relatively limited to specific areas (Hopkins et al 2019a(Hopkins et al , 2019bKlopfstein et al 2019;van Noort 2019). The perceived rarity (two species represented by a single specimen) of Tetractenion suggests that, with implementation of further rigorous inventory surveys across the many inadequately sampled areas of Africa, there are still more Tetractenion species to be discovered.…”

A New Genus and Two New Species of the Subfamily Nesomesochorinae Ashmead (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae)

“…Nesomesochorinae is a rather small subfamily of Darwin wasps (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) (Klopfstein et al 2019) with only three genera (Chriodes Förster 1869, Klutiana Betrem 1932, andNonnus Cresson 1874) and 60 described species (Yu et al 2016). Nesomesochorinae was placed in Campopleginae as the tribe Nonnini (e.g., Townes 1970).…”