''Dryinus grimaldii'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

in the

dryinid Dryinidae is a cosmopolitan family of solitary wasps. Its name comes from the Greek ''drys'' for oak: Latreille named the type genus ''Dryinus'' because the first species was collected in an oak plant in Spain. The larvae are parasitoids of the ...

genus ''

Dryinus ''Dryinus'' is a cosmopolitan genus of dryinid parasitic wasp. Over 242 species have been described worldwide. Numerous fossil species have been described from the Baltic, Dominican and Burmese amber Burmese amber, also known as Burmite or Kac ...

''. The species is solely known from the early

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

Burdigalian The Burdigalian is, in the geologic timescale, an age (geology), age or stage (stratigraphy), stage in the early Miocene. It spans the time between 20.43 ± 0.05 annum, Ma and 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma (million years ago). Preceded by the Aquitanian (sta ...

stage,

Dominican amber Dominican amber is amber from the Dominican Republic derived from resin of the extinct tree ''Hymenaea protera''. Dominican amber differentiates itself from Baltic amber by being nearly always transparent, and it has a higher number of fossil incl ...

deposits on the island of

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...

History and classification

''Dryinus grimaldii'' is known from a total of five female fossils, the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

, specimen number "AMNH, No. DR-10-1426" and

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). Of ...

, specimen number "AMNH, No. DR-10-1423". Three additional specimens, two labeled "H-10-23C" and one labeled "H-10-100", were identified later and were used in a redescription of the species. The holotype and paratype specimens are composed of complete female specimens which are entombed in blocks of orange colored amber. The type specimens are currently preserved in the

paleoentomology The most recent understanding of the evolution of insects is based on studies of the following branches of science: molecular biology, insect morphology, paleontology, insect taxonomy, evolution, embryology, bioinformatics and scientific computing ...

collections housed in the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

, located in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, USA. The three additional specimens are part of the private amber collection maintained by

George Poinar Jr. George O. Poinar Jr. (born April 25, 1936) is an American entomologist and writer. He is known for popularizing the idea of extracting DNA from insects fossilized in amber, an idea which received widespread attention when adapted by Michael Cr ...

from

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering co ...

Corvallis, Oregon Corvallis ( ) is a city and the county seat of Benton County in central western Oregon, United States. It is the principal city of the Corvallis, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Benton County. As of the 2020 United ...

, USA. ''D. grimaldii'' was first studied by Massimo Olmi of the

University of Tuscia University of Tuscia ( it, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, UNITUS) is a university located in Viterbo, Italy. It was founded in 1979 and comprises 6 faculties. On 26 February 2019, the President of Republic Sergio Mattarella inaugurated th ...

Viterbo Viterbo (; Viterbese: ; lat-med, Viterbium) is a city and ''comune'' in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It conquered and absorbed the neighboring town of Ferento (see Ferentium) in its early history. ...

Lazio region it, Laziale , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, Italy. Olmi's 1995

type description A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have be ...

of the new species was published in ''Redia: Journal of Entomology''. Olmi coined the

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''grimaldii'' in honor of David Grimaldi, Curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. At the time of the species description, ''Dryinus grimaldii'' was only ''Dryinus'' species placed in the ''lamellatus'' species group to be described. In 2011 Olmi and Adalgisa Guglielmino redescribed ''D. grimaldii'' based on the type specimens and the three newly identified specimen in the Poinar collection. They also described a second Dominican amber ''lamellatus'' species, '' D. rasnitsyni'' which bring to fossil record for the species group to two.

Description

''Dryinus grimaldii'' females ranges in size from with an overall body coloration thought to have been brick-red to brownish-yellow. The

chelae A chela ()also called a claw, nipper, or pinceris a pincer (biology), pincer-like organ at the end of certain limbs of some arthropods. The name comes from Ancient Greek , through New Latin '. The plural form is chelae. Legs bearing a chela are ...

on the front pair of legs are modified into claws each with a pair of teeth just below the claw apex. The morphology of the claw is a key distinguishing feature between ''D. grimaldii'' and ''D. rasnitsyni'', which has a much more spatulate shaped claw then that of ''D. grimaldii''. The antennae of ''D. grimaldii'' are notably long, being over nine times the length of the head, with a filiform morphology. The ten antennomere segments have a coating of dense short hairs.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5309701 Dryinidae Miocene insects Fossil taxa described in 1995 Prehistoric insects of the Caribbean