| | Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Hymenoptera |
Unless indicated otherwise, the following attributes are implicit throughout the descriptions, except where the characters concerned are inapplicable.
Adults not conspicuously spherical-headed and ‘necked’. Insects not associated with galls. Solitary insects; the adult populations comprising males and fertile females only.
Head. Sub-antennal grooves absent. Antennae inserted above the lower margins of the eyes; without noticeable elongation of the third segment.
Thorax. Wings present; the wings not long-fringed; not folding longitudinally. Fore-wings not combining greatly reduced venation with conspicuous stigmal vein; not combining greatly reduced venation with a conspicuous radial cell. Hind-wings not linear and not basally stalked.
Abdomen. The ‘waist’ simple. The abdomen not extremely laterally compressed and knife-like. Visible abdominal segments not highly metallic.
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Hymenoptera. Version: 14th April 2022. delta-intkey.com’.