Phylogeny and Biogeography of the Tiphiid Wasp Subfamily Thynninae (Hymenoptera)

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This project is the second part of a comprehensive revision of the tiphiid wasp subfamily Thynninae. Thynninae includes more than 50 genera and 750 described species. Probably 30% of the genera and species remain undescribed. These wasps occur in South America and Australasia, apparently having reached both regions via land bridge connections with Antarctica some 75 million years ago. They are parasites of ground-dwelling scarab beetles, including those related to the Japanese Beetle. The transantarctic distribution, and distinctive relationship between morphology, taxonomy and behavior makes this group of wasps ideal for analyses of their evolution and distribution. Taxonomic and evolutionary analyses have been completed for the South American groups. The proposed research in this project on thynnines includes evolutionary analysis of the Australasian genera, and then overall evolutionary and biogeographic analyses of the entire subfamily worldwide.