Ismaridae is a family of

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s belonging to the order Hymenoptera. About 50 species are known in this small relictual group; all the species for which the biology is known appear to be

hyperparasitoid A hyperparasite, also known as a metaparasite, is a parasite whose host, often an insect, is also a parasite, often specifically a parasitoid. Hyperparasites are found mainly among the wasp-waisted Apocrita within the Hymenoptera, and in two ...

s that parasitize

Dryinidae 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 ...

(that attack leafhoppers). This lineage was formerly included in the family

Diapriidae The Diapriidae are a family of parasitoid wasps. These tiny insects have an average length of 2–4 mm and never exceed 8 mm. They typically attack larvae and pupae of a wide range of insects, especially flies. The about 2,300 described ...

, as the subfamily Ismarinae, but differ from diapriid wasps by lacking a facial projection from which the antenna arise, and characterized by various degrees of fusion of the

metasoma The metasoma is the posterior part of the body, or tagma, of arthropods whose body is composed of three parts, the other two being the prosoma and the mesosoma. In insects, it contains most of the digestive tract, respiratory system, and circul ...

terga A ''tergum'' (Latin for "the back"; plural ''terga'', associated adjective tergal) is the dorsal ('upper') portion of an arthropod segment other than the head. The anterior edge is called the 'base' and posterior edge is called the 'apex' or 'ma ...

. The family historically included only two genera, '' Ismarus'' and ''Szelenyioprioides'', though the latter genus was recently synonymized with the diapriid genus '' Spilomicrus'', thereby restricting the family to solely ''Ismarus''.Chang-Jun Kim, Robert Copland & David Notton (2018) The family Ismaridae Thomson (Hymenoptera, Diaprioidea): first record for the Afrotropical region with description of fourteen species new to science. African Invertebrates 59(2):127-163.

References

Parasitica Apocrita families Monogeneric insect families {{Apocrita-stub