Mutillidae is a rather large family of solitary wasps, consisting of more than 4,300 species worldwide. As adults they feed on nectar, but the larvae are parasitoids of other insect immatures. Mutillid taxonomy is well-studied, but their biology is less well known, especially in the Oriental region. Host information is known for only about 3% of mutillid species. Here, we present the first documentation of the mating biology and host use of the velvet ant Trogaspidia pagdeni (Mickel, 1933), which uses the blue nest-renting wasp Chalybion malignum (Kohl, 1906) (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae) as its host during its prepupal stage. We observed the male seizing the female in flight by grasping her neck with his mandibles. He then flew with her and landed on a leaf of the Chinese hibiscus, Hibiscus 3 rosa-sinensis L. His courtship display involved continuously wiggling the female harshly in the air, while simultaneously striking her head and mesosoma with his antennae for several seconds before attempting to copulate with her. Copulation lasted about 10 seconds, with the entire courtship and mating period lasting about two minutes.
Orthoptera holdings of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) are described based on recent determination, curation, and digitization efforts. The collection's strengths are in Nearctic and Neotropical fauna, and species diversity is greatest in the families Acrididae and Tettigoniidae. The historical nature of the collection captures a snapshot of the state of Orthopteran systematics in the past and provides myriad opportunities for future research. Areas for collection improvement are discussed.
Molecular techniques, such as DNA Barcoding, are useful in species identification. BOLDSystems, or Barcode of Life Data System, is an open repository database developed by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG) that holds millions of sequences. This online workbench and database groups and organizes molecular and morphological information, and makes the data available to scientific community. One limitation of BOLDSystems data has been the reliability and accuracy of the species identifications. To evaluate usefulness of BOLDSystems data, we examined 229 specimens in the genus Alloxysta Förster, 1869 (Hymenoptera: Cynipoidea: Figitidae: Charipinae) borrowed from BOLDSystems. In addition to evaluating the quality available COI sequences, we also examined morphological characteristics from primarily lateral habitus images of the 229 vouchers and provide recommendations for improvement. We found some specimens were misidentified and discovered at least one new species among them. At the end of the study, we provided here recommendations for improvement and incorporated our results from this study via the database portal. Our results indicate that data on BOLD and other such databases require well-trained taxonomists to verify species determinations based on primarily molecular data. It is important that molecular and morphological information be combined in order to improve species identification.
