Word Finder - hymenoptera

definition

Any insect of the order Hymenoptera

The hinder abdominal segments and the stings of the queens and workers resemble those of other stinging Hymenoptera.

In some parasitic Hymenoptera there is only a single the proctodaeum respectively.

It is interesting and suggestive that in a few families of digging Hymenoptera (such as the Mutillidae), allied to the ants, the females are wingless.

Another group of Hymenoptera occasionally causes much harm in fir plantations, namely, the Siricidae or wood-wasps, whose larvae burrow into the trunks of the trees and thus kill them.

This has been found to be the case in insects so widely different as Orthoptera and Aculeate Hymenoptera.

His classification was founded mainly on the nature of the wings, and five of his orders - the Hymenoptera (bees, ants, wasps, &c.), Coleoptera (beetles), Diptera (two-winged flies), Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), and Hemiptera (bugs, cicads, &c.) - are recognized to-day with nearly the same limits as he laid down.

See Hymenoptera.

To the Lias also can be traced back the Neuroptera, the Trichoptera, the orthorrhaphous Diptera and, according to the determination of certain obscure fossils, also the Hymenoptera (ants).

In Tertiary times the higher Diptera, besides Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera, referable to existing families, become fairly abundant.

Fragmentary as the records are, they show that the Exopterygota preceded the Endopterygota in the evolution of the class, and that among the Endopterygota those orders in which the greatest difference exists between imago and larva - the Lepidoptera, Diptera and Hymenoptera - were the latest to take their rise.

A large and dominant Holoarctic fauna, with numerous subdivisions, ranges over the great northern continents, and is characterized by the abundance of certain families like the Carahidae and Staphylinidae among the Coleoptera and the Tenthredinidae among the Hymenoptera.

From the evidence of fossils it seems that the higher sub-order - Apocrita - can be traced back to the Lias, so that we believe the Hymenoptera to be more ancient than the Diptera, and far more ancient than the Lepidoptera.

We would trace the Hymenoptera back therefore to the primitive endopterygote stock.

In some way it is assured among the highest of the Hexapoda - the Lepidoptera, Diptera and Hymenoptera - that the larva finds itself amid a rich food-supply.

On the other hand it has been specially recorded of two of the species of spider-destroyers that they have great dislike and apparent fear of these little poisonous Hymenoptera.

But since ants are not persecuted by these two families of Hymenoptera, the greatest enemies spiders have to contend with, it is evident that mimicry of ants is of supreme advantage to spiders.

There are 8 families of Coleoptera, 6 of Orthoptera, 23 of Hymenoptera, 14 of Lepidoptera and 7 of Diptera.

The relationship of the Hymenoptera to other orders of insects is discussed in the article Hexapoda, but it may be mentioned here that in structure the highest members of the order are remarkably specialized, and that in the perfection of their instincts they stand at the head of all insects and indeed of all invertebrate animals.

About 30,000speciesof Hymenoptera are now known.

A large number of Hymenoptera are, however, entirely wingless - at least as regards one sex or form of the species.

The sucking tongue of the Hymenoptera has often been compared with the hypopharynx of other insects.

Sharp, however, the hypopharynx is present in all Hymenoptera as a distinct structure at the base of the " tongue," which must be regarded as representing the fused laciniae of the second maxillae.

The wings in the Hymenoptera show a marked reduction in the number of nervures as compared with more primitive insects.

Among many of the smaller Hymenoptera we find that the wings are almost destitute of nervures.

The legs of Hymenoptera are of the typical insectan form, and the foot is usually composed of five segments.

In the different families of the Hymenoptera, there are various modifications of the ovipositor, in accord with the habits of the insects and the purposes to which the organ is put.

Most male Hymenoptera have processes which form claspers or genital armature.

Many points of interest are to be noted in the internal structure of the Hymenoptera.

The crop is followed by a proventriculus which, in the higher Hymenoptera, forms the so-called " honey stomach," by the contraction of whose walls the solid and liquid food can be separated, passed on into the digestive stomach, or held in the crop ready for regurgitation into the mouth.

Parthenogenesis is of normal occurrence in the life-cycle of many Hymenoptera.

The organs and instincts for egg-laying and foodproviding are perhaps the most remarkable features in the economy of the Hymenoptera.

Thus we find throughout the order a degree of care for offspring unreached by other insects, and this family-life has, in the best known of the Hymenoptera - ants, wasps and bees - developed into an elaborate social organization.

Reference has been already made to the various methods of feeding practised by Hymenoptera in the larval stage, and the care taken of or for the young throughout the order leads in many cases to the gathering of such food by the mother or nurse.

Most Hymenoptera are of moderate or small size, the giants of the order - certain saw-flies and tropical digging-waspsnever reach the bulk attained by the largest beetles, while the wing-spread is narrow compared with that of many dragonflies and moths.

Hymenoptera are probably less widely distributed than Aptera, Coleoptera or Diptera, but they are to be found in all except the most inhospitable regions of the globe.

It is of interest that the waters have been invaded by the parasitic group of the Hymenoptera, since in number of species this is by far the largest of the order.

Linnaeus divided the Hymenoptera into two sections - the Terebrantia, whose females possess a cutting or piercing ovipositor, and the Aculeata, in which the female organ is modified into a sting.

This sub-order includes the vast majority of the Hymenoptera, characterized by the narrowly constricted waist in the adult and by the legless condition of the larva.

In the Chalcidoidea, Ichneumonoidea and Proctotrypoidea will be found nearly all the " parasitic Hymenoptera " of older classifications.

All the other members of the group may be regarded as forming a single family - the Proctotrypidae, including an immense number of small parasitic Hymenoptera, not a few of which are wingless.

In the other families both sexes are winged, and the instinct and industry of the females are among the most wonderful in the Hymenoptera.

The bees which make up this group agree with the Sphecoidea in the short pronotum, but may be distinguished from all other Hymenoptera by the widened first tarsal segment and the plumose hairs on head and body.

Monographs of most of the families of British Hymenoptera have now been published.

For saw-flies and gallflies, see P. Cameron's British Phytephagous Hymenoptera (4 vols., London, Ray Soc., 1882-1893).

They have from very early times been resorted to as a means of staining the hair of a dark colour, and they are the base of the tattooing dye of the Somali women.3 The gall-making Hymenoptera include, besides the Cynipidae proper, certain species of the genus Eurytoma (Isosoma, Walsh) and family Chalcididae, 'e.g.'

Nevertheless, as explained below, it seems to be highly probable that ant-imitating insects and spiders, when the resemblance is dependent to a greater extent upon size, shape and movement than upon tint, have acquired their mimetic likeness especially to protect them from the attacks of such insect-enemies as predaceous wasps of the family Pompilidae, flies of the family Asilidae, and from socalled parasitic hymenoptera of the family Ichneumonidae, as well as from other insect-eating Arthropods.

There are records, however, of species of Mantispa mimicking the wasp Polistes in North America and Borneo and Belonogaster in South Africa; and other species of the genus imitate parasitic hymenoptera of the genera Bracon and Mesostenus.

The elytra are equally reduced, and apparently for the same purpose, in an Australian Longicorn beetle (Esthesis ferrugineus), which, like so many wasp-like Hymenoptera, has the body banded red and black.

Another instance in this group is supplied by a Bornean species of Reduviidae which mimics a species of the genus Bracon, one of the parasitic Hymenoptera.

Many of the Syrphidae are banded black and yellow and present a general resemblance to wasps, especially when they alight, the resemblance being enhanced by a twitching action of the abdomen imitating the similar action so familiar in species of stinging hymenoptera.