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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the families of Hymenoptera |
Solitary insects.
Head. Eyes emarginate. Antennal segments (10–)12 (females), or (10–)13 (males). Antennae geniculate.
Thorax. Thorax black. Pronotum long, extending back to the tegulae. The spiracle cover lobe of the pronotum margined with close fine hairs. Mesopleuron without a suture. Cenchri absent. Wings present, or absent; not folding longitudinally. Fore-wings with the venation well developed. Closed fore-wing cells 6–10. Submarginal cells 3. Hind-wings with closed cells. Fore femur not noticeably dilated. Hind femur without a well defined trochantellus. Hind tibiae without specialised spurs.
Abdomen. The abdomen with a marked basal constriction; long petiolate to short-waisted. The ‘waist’ simple. Visible abdominal segments 6 (females), or 7 (males). The gaster colour-patterned; black-and-yellow, or black, yellow and orange. Ovipositor of females not visibly protruding; modified as a retractable sting.
Larvae. Larvae legless or the legs vestigial; socially parasitic on hosts selected by the mother and predacious (socially parasitic on stem-nesting bees and wasps: the first stage larva has big mandibles and destroys the host larva, and the later instar larvae with smaller mandibles consume the stored food).
British representation. Species in Britain 2; Sapyga.
Classification. Suborder Apocrita; Series Aculeata; Superfamily Scolioidea.
Illustrations. • Sapyga clavicornis (B. Ent. 532). • Sapyga clavicornis (detail: B. Ent. 532). • Sapyga clavicornis (dissections: B. Ent. 532). • Sapyga clavicornis: B. Ent. 532, legend+text. • Sapyga clavicornis: B. Ent. 532, text cont.. • Sapya quinquepunctata: Saunders VII. Sapygidae. 7, Sapyga quinquepunctata (female); 8, antenna of male Sapyga clavicornis. From Saunders (1896).
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’.
