Quicke The Braconid and Ichneumonid Parasitoid Wasps

Biology, Systematics, Evolution and Ecology
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-118-90706-1
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 704 Seiten, E-Book

The Ichneumonoidea is a vast and important superfamily ofparasitic wasps, with some 60,000 described species and estimatednumbers far higher, especially for small-bodied tropical taxa. Thesuperfamily comprises two cosmopolitan families - Braconidae andIchneumonidae - that have largely attracted separate groups ofresearchers, and this, to a considerable extent, has meant thatunderstanding of their adaptive features has often been consideredin isolation. This book considers both families, highlightingsimilarities and differences in their
adaptations.
The classification of the whole of the Ichneumonoidea, along withmost other insect orders, has been plagued by typology wherebyundue importance has been attributed to particular characters indefining groups. Typology is a common disease of traditionaltaxonomy such that, until recently, quite a lot of taxa have beenassociated with the wrong higher clades. The sheer size of thegroup, and until the last 30 or so years, lack of accessibleidentification materials, has been a further impediment to researchon all but a handful of 'lab rat' species usuallycultured initially because of their potential in biologicalcontrol.
New evidence, largely in the form of molecular data, have shownthat many morphological, behavioural, physiological and anatomicalcharacters associated with basic life history features,specifically whether wasps are ecto- or endoparasitic, or idiobiontor koinobiont, can be grossly misleading in terms of the phylogenythey suggest. This book shows how, with better supportedphylogenetic hypotheses entomologists can understand far more aboutthe ways natural selection is acting upon them.
This new book also focuses on this superfamily with which theauthor has great familiarity and provides a detailed coverage ofeach subfamily, emphasising anatomy, taxonomy andsystematics, biology, as well as pointing out the importance andresearch potential of each group. Fossil taxa are included and italso has sections on
biogeography, global species richness, culturing and rearing andpreparing specimens for taxonomic study. The book highlights areaswhere research might be particularly rewarding and suggestssystems/groups that need investigation. The author provides a largecompendium of references to original research on each group. Thisbook is an essential workmate for all postgraduates and researchersworking on ichneumonoid or other parasitic wasps worldwide. It willstand as a reference book for a good number of years, and whilerapid advances in various fields such as genomics and hostphysiological interactions will lead to new information, as anoverall synthesis of the current state it will stay relevant for along time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Quicke, Donald L. J.

Über Autor(innen)

Donald L. J. Quicke is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He graduated from Oxford University with a degree in zoology and after doctoral and postdoctoral work on snail neurophysiology, sea anemone ecology and spider venoms, made parasitic wasps, and especially the ichneumonoid wasp family Braconidae, his main love and research interest. He held a lectureship at Sheffield University, moved to Imperial College London in 1993 and held a joint post between them and the Natural History Museum, London, until retiring in 2013 to live in Thailand. He was made Professor of Systematics in 2008. He has travelled widely collecting and studying parasitic wasps, especially in Africa. Over the past years he has described more than 560 new species and 76 new genera, including a number of fossil taxa, as well as making extensive studies of functional anatomy parasitic wasp ovipositors which are of enormous biological importance. A lot of his recent work has concerned global diversity estimation and patterns.