Some people may panic at the thought of a painful wasp sting without realizing that many of these insects don't sting and are actually helpful to the environment. Parasitic wasps are such non-stinging insects that save the U.S. and other governments hundreds of millions of dollars each year by ridding the environment of agricultural and forest pest insects. The female wasp lays her eggs on or in the bodies of insect or spider hosts. After hatching, wasp maggots feed on the host, eventually killing it. Unfortunately, biological information about these wasps is lacking in the scientific community. Only one species of Tetrasphaeropyx Cresson (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is known. The goal of this research is to discover and disseminate biological data about all Tetrasphaeropyx species. The Principal Investigator (PI) of this study has acquired 942 Tetrasphaeropyx specimens from 12 major North American museums and estimates that there may be a minimum of 60 new species yet to be described. All examined specimens with recorded host associations exclusively parasitize inchworm caterpillars which feed on forest trees and agricultural plants in North America. Methods for accomplishing this study are as follows. Over about 2 years, all specimens will be sorted into species. A digital image library is being built using a Leica 12.5 MZ stereomicroscope, a Syncroscopy digitalized imaging system, and an IBM Intellistation M Pro computer, with Adobe Photoshop software. During this period a phylogenetic hypothesis, or hypothesis of the natural history of the group will be developed. The species concept for the group will be refined in the process; thus, the phylogenetic analysis will yield crucial information used to define species. An image library of diagnostic morphological characters for identifying species will be built for phylogenetic analysis and for building an identification key for all species. The identification key will be accompanied with digitalized illustrations of diagnostic character states, and will itself be made accessible as a digitalized online key. A monograph of the biology, including host association information and species geographical ranges, taxonomy, and phylogeny of the group will be submitted for publication in a major scientific journal.
This investigation will provide important information about the parasitic wasp group Tetrasphaeropyx to entomologists, foresters, agriculturalists, conservation biologists, and others. It will offer an opportunity for training a graduate student and undergraduate students in insect taxonomy and evolution, as well as in technologies used for describing and classifying organisms. Thus, this project will begin training future scientists who will contribute to environmental conservation. Because of the tremendous species diversity of parasitic wasps, and the fact that each such group, in some cases each species, attacks a different kind of host, these insects are crucial in controlling potential insect pest population densities. As the group Tetrasphaeropyx becomes known, biologists will have a valuable tool for more accurately assessing biological diversity and habitat quality. It may provide an alternative to pesticides for managing potentially economically harmful outbreaks of inchworms.
