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Hindawi, Psyche, (2012), p. 1-24, 2012

DOI: 10.1155/2012/134746

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Diversity of Species and Behavior of Hymenopteran Parasitoids of Ants: A Review

Journal article published in 2012 by Jean-Paul Lachaud, Gabriela Pérez-Lachaud ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Academic Editor: Alain Lenoir Copyright © 2012 J.-P. Lachaud and G. Pérez-Lachaud. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Reports of hymenopterans associated with ants involve more than 500 species, but only a fraction unambiguously pertain to actual parasitoids. In this paper, we attempt to provide an overview of both the diversity of these parasitoid wasps and the diversity of the types of interactions they have formed with their ant hosts. The reliable list of parasitoid wasps using ants as primary hosts includes at least 138 species, reported between 1852 and 2011, distributed among 9 families from 3 superfamilies. These parasitoids exhibit a wide array of biologies and developmental strategies: ecto-or endoparasitism, solitary or gregarious, and idio-or koinobiosis. All castes of ants and all developmental stages, excepting eggs, are possible targets. Some species parasitize adult worker ants while foraging or performing other activities outside the nest; however, in most cases, parasitoids attack ant larvae either inside or outside their nests. Based on their abundance and success in attacking ants, some parasitoid wasps like diapriids and eucharitids seem excellent potential models to explore how parasitoids impact ant colony demography, population biology, and ant community structure. Despite a significant increase in our knowledge of hymenopteran parasitoids of ants, most of them remain to be discovered.