This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Tiphiidae is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007) |
| Tiphiid wasps | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 mating Thynninae on Xanthorrhoea
|
||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Subfamilies | ||||||||||||||
|
Anthoboscinae |
Tiphiidae (also known as the Tiphiid wasps or, rarely, flower wasps) is a family of large solitary wasps whose larvae are almost universally parasitoids of various beetle larvae, especially those in the superfamily Scarabaeoidea.
Most species are small, but they can be up to 30 mm long. The females of some subfamilies (all Brachycistidinae, Diamminae, Methochinae, and Thynninae) are wingless, and hunt ground-dwelling (fossorial) beetle larvae, or (in one species) mole crickets. The prey is paralysed with the female's sting and an egg lain upon it so the wasp larva has a ready supply of food. In species where both sexes are winged, males are similar in size to the females, but much more slender. The males of species with wingless females, however, are often much larger than the females and have wings, the adults mating in the air, with the female carried by the male's genitalia (see photo). Adults feed on nectar and are minor pollinators. As some of the ground-dwelling scarab species attacked by tiphiids are pests, some of these wasps are considered beneficial as biological control agents.
Family Description
See [1] Also Wing venation image at [2]
Examples
![[3]](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Tiphia.jpg){kind=link}
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 3 November 2008, at 16:46.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Tiphiidae".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.