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Classification of fig wasps

(Life: Kingdom: Metazoa (animals); Phylum: Arthropoda; Class: Hexapoda; Order: Hymenoptera;  Superfamily: Chalcidoidea)

In contrast to Bouček’s (1988) classification where fig wasps were united under the single family Agaonidae, subsequent phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that the Agaonidae as defined by Bouček was paraphyletic. Three of the constituent subfamilies of non-pollinating fig wasps (Sycoecinae, Otitesellinae and Sycoryctinae) were reassigned to the Pteromalidae, leaving the pollinating fig wasps in the Agaonidae (Rasplus et al. 1998; Campbell et al. 2000. Agaonidae were further split into 3 subfamilies (Cruaud et al. 2010). Subsequently the Sycophaginae were shown to be a sister clade to the Agaonidae and are currently included in this family and the remaining group of non-pollinating fig wasps (Epichrysomallinae) is now also placed in the Pteromalidae (Heraty et al. 2013).

References

Bouček, Z. (1988) Australasian Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera). A biosystematic revision of genera of fourteen families with a reclassification of species. C.A.B. International, United Kingdom, 832 pp.

Campbell, B., Heraty, J., Rasplus, J. Y., Chan, K., Steffan-Campbell, J. & Babcock, C. (2000) Molecular systematics of the Chalcidoidea using 28S-rDNA. In: Austin A. D. & Dowton M. (Ed) The Hymenoptera: Evolution, Biodiversity and Biological Control, CSIRO Publishing, Canberra, pp. 59–73.

Cruaud, A., Jabbour-Zahab, R., Genson, G., Cruaud, C., Couloux, A., Kjellberg, F., van Noort, S. & Rasplus, J.Y. 2010. Laying the foundations for a new classification of Agaonidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea), a multilocus phylogenetic approach. Cladistics 26: 359-387.

Heraty, J. M., Burks, R. A., Cruaud, A., Gibson, G. A. P., Liljeblad, J., Munro, J., Rasplus, J.-Y., Delvare, G., Janšta, P., Gumovsky, A., Huber, J., Woolley, J. B., Krogmann, L., Heydon, S., Polaszek, A., Schmidt, S., Darling, D. C., Gates, M. W., Mottern, J., Murray, E., Dal Molin, A., Triapitsyn, S., Baur, H., Pinto, J. D., van Noort, S., George, J. and Yoder, M. 2013. A phylogenetic analysis of the megadiverse Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera). Cladistics. doi: 10.1111/cla.12006

Rasplus J.Y., Kerdelhué, C., Le Clainche I. & Mondor, G. (1998) Molecular phylogeny of fig waps (Hymenoptera). Agaonidae are not monophyletic. Compte Rendu de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris, 321, 517–527.

Web authors Simon van Noort (Iziko South African Museum)

and Jean-Yves Rasplus (INRA, France)

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