First record of the family Azotidae from Ecuador, with a description of a new species of Ablerus Howard (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Azotidae) from the Galapagos Islands.

Azotidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) is a small family (1 genus, 92 species) comprised primarily of hyperparasitoids of species of Hymenoptera that target whiteflies and scale insects. In the present study, we provide the first record of the genus Ablerus Howard, 1898 (=Azotus Howard 1898) from the Galapagos Islands, based on material collected in a survey of Hymenoptera across the archipelago's main islands. One new species, Ablerus byroni sp.

The ants of the Galápagos Islands (Hymenoptera, Formicidae): a historical overview, checklist, and identification key.

The Galápagos ant fauna has long been understudied, with the last taxonomic summary being published almost a century ago. Here, a comprehensive and updated overview of the known ant species of the Galápagos Islands is provided with updated species distributions. The list is based on an extensive review of literature, the identification of more than 382,000 specimens deposited in different entomological collections, and recent expeditions to the islands.

Land use is a stronger determinant of ecological network complexity than the number of trophic levels.

Land modification causes biodiversity loss and ecosystem modification. Despite many studies on the impacts of this factor, there is little empirical evidence on how it affects the interaction networks of plants, herbivores and their natural enemies; likewise, there is little evidence on how those networks change due to differences in the complexity of the communities they comprise. We analyzed the effects of land use and number of trophic levels on the interaction networks of exotic legume species and their associated arthropods.

Morphologic Differentiation of the Exotic Parasitoid Eupelmus pulchriceps (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae) in the Galapagos Archipelago.

The historical and geographical properties of the archipelagos allow a detailed study of species diversification, and phenotypic traits can indicate the extent of such processes. Eupelmus pulchriceps (Cameron, 1904) is an exotic species to the Galapagos archipelago, and generalist parasitoid that attacks a beetle species that consumes the seeds of the invasive shrub Leucaena leucocephala (Lam.) de Wit.

Invaders of pollination networks in the Galapagos Islands: emergence of novel communities.

The unique biodiversity of most oceanic archipelagos is currently threatened by the introduction of alien species that can displace native biota, disrupt native ecological interactions, and profoundly affect community structure and stability. We investigated the threat of aliens on pollination networks in the species-rich lowlands of five Galápagos Islands. Twenty per cent of all species (60 plants and 220 pollinators) in the pooled network were aliens, being involved in 38 per cent of the interactions.