''Ibalia leucospoides'', the knife-shaped ibalia, is a species of ibaliid wasp in the family

Ibaliidae The Ibaliidae are a small family of hymenopteran superfamily Cynipoidea. Ibaliidae differ from most of the cynipoids by the larvae being parasitoids on other wasp larvae in the group Siricidae. The Ibaliidae comprise three extant genera of f ...

Subspecies

These two subspecies belong to the species ''Ibalia leucospoides'':Biolib
/ref> * ''Ibalia leucospoides ensiger'' Norton, 1862 * ''Ibalia leucospoides leucospoides'' (Hochenwarth, 1785)

Distribution

This species is widespread in Africa, Australia, most of Europe and Northern Asia (excluding China), North America, and Southern Asia.ITIS Report - Integrated Taxonomic Information System
/ref>Bug Guide
/ref>

Habitat

These ibaliid wasps mainly can be found in forests dominated by various conifers genera (''

Abies Firs (''Abies'') are a genus of 48–56 species of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Pinaceae. They are found on mountains throughout much of North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The genus is most closely related t ...

'', '' Cupressus'', '' Libocedrus'', '' Picea'', ''

Pinus A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden ...

'' and ''

Tsuga ''Tsuga'' (, from Japanese (), the name of ''Tsuga sieboldii'') is a genus of conifers in the subfamily Abietoideae of Pinaceae, the pine family. The common name hemlock is derived from a perceived similarity in the smell of its crushed foli ...

'' species).A. Shelto
Biological Control - A Guide to Natural Enemies in North America
/ref> This species has been introduced into conifer plantations of various countries to exert biological control pressure on pest populations.

Description

''Ibalia leucospoides'' can reach a body length of about . These small wasp have black head, thorax and legs. Abdomen is dark red, rectangular, pronouncedly compressed laterally and unmarked. Antennae are filiform, with 13 antennal segments in males (11 in females). The wings are transparent, with semitransparent apical ends. This species is rather similar to '' Ibalia anceps'', that shows a different color pattern. Ibalia leucospoides

Biology

This species has one generation a year (

univoltine Voltinism is a term used in biology to indicate the number of broods or generations of an organism in a year. The term is most often applied to insects, and is particularly in use in sericulture, where silkworm varieties vary in their voltinism. ...

), typically coinciding with host emergence. Adults can be found from April to December, depending on location. Females lay eggs on the egg or first instar larvae of siricids. In fact, these wasps are solitary parasitoids of woodwasps ( Siricidae family), especially ''

Sirex ''Sirex'' is a genus of wasps in the family Siricidae, the horntails or wood wasps. They inject eggs with fungal endosymbionts into wood. The fungus is contained in a mycangium which nourishes it with secretions, and in turn it digests wood fo ...

'', ''

Urocerus ''Urocerus'' is a genus of horntails in the family Siricidae. There are about eight described species in ''Urocerus''. Species These species belong to the genus ''Urocerus'': * ''Urocerus albicornis'' ( Fabricius, 1781) (white horned horntail) ...

'' and ''

Xeris ''Xeris'' is a genus of horntails found in North America and Eurasia. Achille Costa circumscribed the genus in 1894. Synonyms In 1987, Malkiat S. Saini and Devinder Singh circumscribed a new genus, ''Neoxeris'' upon their description of a new s ...

'' species.D. Fischbein and J.C. Corle
Classical biological control of an invasive forest pest: a world perspective of the management of Sirex noctilio using the parasitoid Ibalia leucospoides (Hymenoptera: Ibaliidae)
Volume 105, Issue 1February 2015 , pp. 1-12 The oviposition sites of siricids presumably are located through the sense of smell. When the parasitoids emerge, they feed on the remains of larvae of the woodwasps, until they pupate.

Biography

*Cameron, E. A. (1962) North American survey for natural enemies of the Siricidae, May–October, 1962. CBIC Report, California Station, Fontana, CA. 21 pp. *Cameron, E. A. (2012) Parasitoids in the management of Sirex: looking back and looking ahead, Ch. 8. In B. Slippers, P. de Groot, and M. J. Wingfield (eds.), The Sirex Woodwasp and its Fungal Symbiont: Research and Management of a Worldwide Invasive Pest. Springer, New York, NY. *Champlain, A. B. (1922) Records of hymenopterous parasites in Pennsylvania. Psyche 29: 95–100. *Coyle, D. R., and K. J. K. Gandhi. (2012) The ecology and biological control potential of hymenopteran parasitoids of woodwasps (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) in North America. Environ. Entomol. 41: 731–749. *Eager, P. T., D. C. Allen, J. L. Frair, and M. K. Fierke. (2011) Within-tree distributions of the Sirex noctilio Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) - parasitoid complex and development of an optimal sampling scheme. Environ. Entomol. 40: 1266–1275. *Liu, Z., and G. Nordlander. (1992) Ibaliid parasitoids of siricids woodwasps in North America: two new Ibalia species and a key to species (Hymenoptera: Cynipoidea). Proc. Entomol. Soc. Wash. 94: 500–507. *Liu Z., Nordlander G. - Review of the family Ibaliidae (Hymenoptera: Cynipoidea) with keys to genera and species of the world - Entomologica Scandinavica 25: 377–392, 1994 *Long, S. J., D. W. Williams, and A. E. Hajek. (2009) Sirex species (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) and their parasitoids in Pinus sylvestris in eastern North America. Can. Entomol. 141: 153–157. *Norton, E. (1963) A description of several new Hymenoptera. Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Philadelphia 1: 198–200. *Ryan, K., P. de Groot, R. W. Nott, S. Drabble, I. Ochoa, C. Davis, S. M. Smith, and J. J. Turgeon. (2012) Natural enemies associated with Sirex noctilio (Hymenoptera: Siricidae) and S. nigricornis in Ontario, Canada. Environ. Entomol. 41: 289–297. *Schiff, N. M., H. Goulet, D. R. Smith, C. Boudreault, A. D. Wilson, and B. E. Scheffler. (2012) Siricidae (Hymenoptera: Symphyta: Siricoidea) of the Western Hemisphere. Can. J. Arthropod Ident. 21: 1–305. *Smith, D. R., and N. M. Schiff. (2002) A review of the siricid woodwasps and their ibaliid parasitoids (Hymenoptera: Siricidae, Ibaliidae) in the eastern United States, with emphasis on the mid-Atlantic region. Proc. Entomol. Soc. Wash. 104: 174–194. *Taylor, K. L. (1976) The introduction and establishment of insect parasitoids to control Sirex noctilio in Australia. Entomophaga 21: 429–440. *Weld, L. H. (1952) Cynipoidea (Hym.) 1905–1950. Privately printed, Ann Arbor, MI. 351 pp. * Yoshimoto, C. M. (1970) A new ibaliid wasp from North America (Hymenoptera: Cynipoidea, Ibaliidae). Can. Entomol. 102: 1196–1198.

References

External links

Ukrainian Biodiversity Information Network

Researchgate

Waarneming
Parasitic wasps Insects described in 1785 Cynipoidea {{apocrita-stub