The Chalcidoidea bush of life: evolutionary history of a massive radiation of minute wasps.

Chalcidoidea are mostly parasitoid wasps that include as many as 500 000 estimated species. Capturing phylogenetic signal from such a massive radiation can be daunting. Chalcidoidea is an excellent example of a hyperdiverse group that has remained recalcitrant to phylogenetic resolution.

The South American species of Chalcis Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae).

Chalcis Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae) currently includes over 50 described species, most of them from temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to the present study, only Chalcis pilicauda (Cameron) had been recorded from South America. The examination of specimens collected in Argentina, southern Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay allowed the description of six new species: C.

A phylogenetic analysis of the megadiverse Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera).

Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera) is extremely diverse with an estimated 500 000 species. We present the first phylogenetic analysis of the superfamily based on both morphological and molecular data. A web-based, systematics workbench mx was used to score 945 character states illustrated by 648 figures for 233 morphological characters for a total of 66 645 observations for 300 taxa.