†Chrysobythidae, a new family of chrysidoid wasps from Cretaceous Burmese amber (Hymenoptera, Aculeata)

ABSTRACT

The chrysidoid wasps are one of the main groups of aculeate parasitoid hymenopterans. Many of its constituent families are relatively well represented in the fossil record, being quite common in many Cenozoic amber deposits worldwide. Conversely, these wasps are scarcely represented in the Cretaceous period. Herein, we describe and illustrate three new genera and five new species from Cenomanian Burmese amber: †Aureobythus decoloratus gen. nov. et sp. nov., †A. punctatus sp. nov., and †A. villosus sp. nov., †Bethylochrysis clypeata gen. nov. et sp. nov., and †Chrysobythus areolatus gen. nov. et sp. nov. The new fossil taxa have a singular body morphology, especially concerning the forewing venation pattern, which does not fit in any of the known chrysidoid lineages. We therefore propose †Chrysobythidae fam. nov. to include these extinct inconspicuous lineages. Phylogenetic affinities with Chrysididae are discussed, based on the interpretations of the main characters of external morphology.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:281EEBDC-3D5F-4BE8-8417-D11F433EE071

KEYWORDS:

• Chrysidoidea
• systematics
• taxonomy
• classification
• fossils

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Denis Brothers for his careful review of the manuscript and for his constructive suggestions that helped improve our work; we also thank André Martins for help in compiling some of the information shown in Table 1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research received financial support from CNPq to GARM (grant 309641/2016-0) and from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) through a scholarship to DAAL (grant 2015/12326-3). This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001.