Encyrtidae

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Encyrtidae
Anicetus communis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Suborder: Apocrita
Superfamily: Chalcidoidea
Family: Encyrtidae
Walker, 1837
Subfamilies

Encyrtinae
Tetracneminae

Diversity
2 subfamilies
c.455 genera
c.3710 species

The Encyrtidae are a large family of parasitic wasps, with some 3710 described species in about 455 genera. The larvae of the majority are primary parasitoids on Hemiptera, though other hosts are attacked, and details of the life history can be variable (e.g., some attack eggs, some attack larvae, others are hyperparasites, and some Encyrtidae develop as parasitoids of ticks). They are found throughout the world in virtually all habitats, and are extremely important as biological control agents.

Some species exhibit a remarkable developmental phenomenon called "polyembryony", in which a single egg multiplies clonally in the host and produces large numbers of identical adult wasps. Even more remarkably, some of the larvae are larger than the others and act in a similar way to the "soldiers" of eusocial insects, attacking any other wasp larvae already in the body of the host, and dying without reproducing ("altruism").

Wasps in this family are relatively easy to separate from other Chalcidoidea by features of the wing venation, the migration of the cerci forwards on the metasoma (and accompanying distortion of the tergites), and a greatly enlarged mesopleuron with anteriorly positioned mesocoxae.

Encyrtid thorax; "h" is the mesopleuron

See also

References

    External links

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