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Parasitic wasp
The term parasitic wasp refers to a large, artificial assemblage of Hymenopteran superfamilies which are primarily parasitoids of other animals, mostly other arthropods. Many of them, such as the family Braconidae, are considered beneficial because they control populations of agricultural pests. Additional recommended knowledgeUse of the termHistorically, the classification system of Hymenoptera included two divisions within the suborder Apocrita: one of these, the Parasitica, is (or should effectively be considered) synonymous with "parasitic wasp". However, the use of the name Parasitica (or its alternative, Terebrantia) has been phased out in recent years, as it is a paraphyletic grouping, and most modern classifications explicitly reject the use of any groups that are not monophyletic. DiversityThe traditional superfamilies in the "Parasitica" are:
Outside of the Parasitica proper, there are a few other groups that could be included in this general category; most of the members of the superfamily Chrysidoidea, and most of the families in the superfamily Vespoidea such as Bradynobaenidae, Mutillidae, Rhopalosomatidae, Sapygidae, Scoliidae, Sierolomorphidae, Tiphiidae, and a few species of Pompilidae. Most of these groups are ectoparasitoids. There is only one small parasitic family, Orussidae, among the Symphyta. |
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Parasitic_wasp". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |