Sclerogibbidae Explained

The Sclerogibbidae are a small family of aculeate wasps in the superfamily Chrysidoidea.

Overview

Sclerogibbidae are ectoparasitoids of Embioptera. The female wasp oviposits an egg on the abdomen of a host. Once the larva emerges, it attaches itself to its host. After the host is consumed, the larva detaches itself from the carcass and spins a cocoon. While in all modern species, females are wingless (apterous), this is not true for fossil species.^[1]

The currently recognised taxa within the family Sclerogibbidae are:^[2]

• subfamily †Sclerogibbodinae
  • genus †Sclerogibbodes Engel & Grimaldi, 2006a Lebanese amber, Barremian
• subfamily Sclerogibbinae
  • genus Caenosclerogibba Yasumatsu, 1958
  • genus Probethylus Ashmead, 1902
  • genus †Pterosclerogibba Olmi, 2005 Dominican amber, Miocene
  • genus Sclerogibba Riggio & De Stefani-Perez, 1888
• †Burmasclerogibba Perkovsky et al 2019 Burmese amber, Cenomanian
• †Chosia Fujiyama 1994 Choshi amber, Japan, Aptian
• †Cretosclerogibba Perkovsky et al 2019 Burmese amber, Cenomanian
• †Edrossia Perkovsky et al 2019 Burmese amber, Cenomanian
• †Gallosclerogibba Perkovsky et al 2019 Charentese amber, France, Cenomanian

Notes and References

1. Perkovsky. Evgeny E.. Martynova. Kateryna V.. Mita. Toshiharu. Olmi. Massimo. Zheng. Yan. Müller. Patrick. Zhang. Qi. Gantier. Flavie. Perrichot. Vincent. November 2020. A golden age for ectoparasitoids of Embiodea: Cretaceous Sclerogibbidae (Hymenoptera, Chrysidoidea) from Kachin (Myanmar), Charentes (France) and Choshi (Japan) ambers. Gondwana Research. en. 87. 1–22. 10.1016/j.gr.2020.06.004. 225012386 .
2. Kateryna V. Martynova, Massimo Olmi, Patrick Müller & Evgeny E. Perkovsky (2019): Description of the first sclerogibbid wasp (Hymenoptera: Sclerogibbidae) from Burmese (Myanmar) amber and its phylogenetic significance, Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Vol. 0, No. 0, 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2018.1551250