HYMENOPTERA > APOCRITA | Parasitica > Chalcidoidea > Eulophidae

Eulophidae is currently the second largest family in the CHALCIDOIDEA with just over 500 species, placed in around 50 genera and separated into four subfamilies.

Eulophid wasps are primary parasitoids of leaf-mining larvae of Lepidoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera. The family as a whole though is very diverse, as would be expected of such a large assemblage of species, with many variations of host preferences and modes of parasitism.

Although it's possible to distinguish members of the family from certain morphological features, including having four-segmented tarsi, the individual species are typically very small with very few that can be reliably identified from photos. Fortunately, the specimen featured here is one of the larger species at around 6mm long and certainly one of the more visually distinctive.

It was confirmed as a Sympiesis by an expert who specialises in chalcid wasps, and subsequently considered as very likely a female Sympiesis dolichogaster. There are actually nine recognised Sympiesis species on the current British List, but only four have been officially recorded according to the distribution data on the NBN Atlas. Sympiesis dolichogaster was last recorded in 1975.

Updated, March 25 (v.2)