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Wikipedia / Scoliidae

Scoliidae, the scoliid wasps or mammoth wasps, is a family of wasps comprising about 300 described species worldwide. They tend to be black, often marked with yellow or orange, and their wing tips are distinctively corrugated. Males are more slender and elongated than females, with significantly longer antennae, but the sexual dimorphism is not as apparent as in many of the Tiphiidae and Thynnidae.

Biology

Scoliid wasps are solitary parasitoids of larvae, most frequently those of the scarab beetle. Female scoliids burrow into the ground or into rotting wood, in search of these larvae and then use their sting to paralyze them. When locating hosts, they may burrow through the soil or follow tunnels already created by scarab larvae. The females are often observed flying close to the ground while searching for scarab larvae in the soil and they sometimes excavate a chamber and move the paralyzed beetle larva into it before depositing an egg. The female lays a single egg on the paralysed grub, often attached transversely to one of the larva's abdominal segments. Scoliid wasps act as important biocontrol agents, as many of the beetles they parasitize are pests, including the Japanese beetle. Male scoliids patrol territories, ready to mate with females emerging from the ground. Adult wasps may be minor pollinators of some plants and can be found on many wildflowers in the late summer.

Scoliidae has at least one species known to engage in pseudocopulation with an orchid. Flowers of the orchid Bipinnula penicillata in subtropical South America resemble females of Pygodasis bistrimaculata, tricking male wasps into attempting to mate and, in the process, provide pollination. Scoliids include some of the largest wasps in the world, such as Megascolia procer.

Taxonomy

Living scoliidae genera are classified as follows into three subfamilies. There are additionally two subfamilies known only from the fossil record.

Subfamily ProscoliinaeProscoliinae Rasnitsyn, 1977

Subfamily CampsomerinaeCampsomerinae Betrem, 1972

Tribe CampsomeriniCampsomerini Betrem, 1972

Subfamily ScoliinaeScoliinae Latreille, 1802

Tribe ScoliiniScoliini Latreille, 1802

Tribe TrielidiniTrielidini Betrem, 1972

Subfamily †ArchaeoscoliinaeArchaeoscoliinae Rasnitsyn, 1993

The subfamily Archaeoscoliinae is known exclusively from the fossil record, with the largest diversity having lived during the Cretaceous (Barremian) before going extinct by the late Eocene (Priabonian).

†Archaeoscolia

†Cretoscolia

†Floriscolia

†Protoscolia

Three additional undescribed specimens from the Ypresian Eocene Okanagan Highlands were referred to the subfamily by S. Bruce Archibald et al. (2018). The two fossils from the Klondike Mountain Formation of Northeastern Washington state, and one fossil from the Allenby Formation of South central British Columbia were mentioned briefly but no specific commentary on placement or finer taxonomic detail was presented in the paper.

Subfamily †PalaeoscoliinaePalaeoscoliinae Antropov, 2014

A second fossil subfamily, Palaeoscoliinae, was described from the Late Eocene to comprise a single species. This species was morphologically closer to the Scoliinae than to the Archaeoscoliinae.

†Palaeoscolia

History

In 1847 and 1849 Eduard Eversmann published his "Fauna Hymenopterologica Volgo-Uralensis—exhibiting the species of Hymenoptera which he observed and described in the provinces situated between the Volga river and the Ural mountains." He placed the Scoliadae as a subfamily of the Sphegidae . He mentioned the genus Scolia with 13 species, the genus Tiphia with 3 species, and the genus Meria , with only the species Meria sexpunctata.

North American species list

There are 36 species of Scoliidae reported to occur in North America. Two additional species, Campsomeriella annulata (Fabricius, 1793) and Micromeriella marginella (Klug, 1810), were introduced to the United States but failed to become established.

References