PROC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 106(3). 2004. pp. 571-585 ILLUSTRATED KEYS TO GENERA OF THE MALE WASPS IN THE SUBFAMILY THYNNINAE (HYMENOPTERA: TIPHIIDAE) Lynn S. Kimsey Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California. One Shields Ave., Davis. CA 95616 (e-mail:
[email protected]) Abstract. — Extensively illustrated keys to the genera of the tiphiid subfamily Thynninae are provided for males, with separate keys for Australasian and South American taxa, and a table is included giving generic composition and synonymies in the Thynninae over the past century. Key Words: Tiphiidae, Thynninae, generic keys The tiphiid subfamily Thynninae has never been any easy group to study. Chang-es in the taxonomy in the past century have made identification of genera nearly impos-sible. There are no up-to-date keys, and a number of recently described genera are so poorly characterized that generic identifi-cation is impossible without identified spec-imens on hand. There have been many changes in the taxonomy of the subfamily since Turner (1910) published the most re-cent key to the genera in the Genera Insec-torum. The number of described genera has increased from 53 as of Turner ( 1910) to 71 today (Table 1 ). Numerous changes in the status of the genera have also taken place. The genus Diamma Westwood was placed in a separate subfamily (Kimsey 1991). Eight genera have been synonymized and a ninth, Glyptometopa Ashmead. was found to belong to a different subfamily, the Bra-chycistidinae, by Mickel and Krombein (1942). Seventeen new genera have been described since 1910. Finally, the subfamily Thynninae has been rearranged and the trib-al classification has also changed in the last century. To further confuse matters male female associations are incomplete and females are unknown for some senera. This is exacer-bated by the frequency of miscoupling. Thynnine females are wingless, antlike and largely subterranean. Males are winged, fossorial and very different looking than the females. Pairs fly in copula and are fre-quently collected in tandem. Sadly, al-though this should give us clear sex asso-ciations, male-female pairs are, on occa-sion, miscoupled (Brown 1993) — pairs con-sisting of two different species, genera or even tribes have been observed. Personal observations suggest that this rate of mis-coupling may be as frequent as 10% of the pairs observed. Therefore species and ge-neric characterization of females cannot be done reliably unless multiple pairs have been collected of a particular species. Thus, the taxonomy of this group is based on male features. While this is not an optimal situation it will be some time before fe-males are sufficiently well known to be in-cluded in generic keys. Because of these major taxonomic changes it seems appropriate and necessary to produce illustrated keys to the genera of Australia and South America to facilitate biological and systematic research in this group. The genera in the two continental
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