Keys to the Genera of Nearctic Chalcidoidea: A Collaborative Project

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A collaborative project is proposed to produce illustrated keys to enable identification of all genera of Chalcidoidea (a large group of parasitic wasps) known from North America including temperate areas of Mexico. The Chalcidoidea are one of the largest groups of wasps, containing about 16,000 described species. Because all species are parasites of other insects, they are of great importance to agriculture as natural enemies of insect pests and of fundamental importance in ecological systems as regulators of plant-feeding insects. However, adequate keys to identify genera presently do not exist for most of the twenty families present in the region. Seventeen scientists have made formal commitments to participate in this project and each family is covered by one or more contributors. Agreements on scope, content and format of the project was reached at a workshop held in 1989. The approach will be a pragmatic synthesis of available information using current concepts of genera and higher taxa (families and subfamilies). The output will be a single manual. Introductory chapters will include a key to chalcidoid families and a section on anatomical terms explaining the uniform terminology to be used throughout the manual. The keys will use an annotated format to provide information on distributions, numbers of species, and hosts when practical for each genus. A second planning workshop is proposed for integration of the chapters and hands-on testing of draft keys by all participants. The resulting manual will enable many biologists to identify Neartic chalcidoids to genus and will vastly facilitate this task for systematics.