The Ormyridae are a small family of

parasitic wasp Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causi ...

s in the superfamily

Chalcidoidea Chalcid wasps (, , for their metallic colour) are insects within the superfamily Chalcidoidea, part of the order Hymenoptera. The superfamily contains some 22,500 known species, and an estimated total diversity of more than 500,000 species, me ...

. They are either

parasitoid In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host (biology), host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionarily stable str ...

s or hyperparasitoids on

gall Galls (from the Latin , 'oak-apple') or ''cecidia'' (from the Greek , anything gushing out) are a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants, fungi, or animals. Plant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to be ...

-forming insects, primarily cynipid wasps and tephritid flies. The 120 or so species in three genera (mostly in the genus ''

Ormyrus ''Ormyrus'' is a genus of chalcid wasps in the family Ormyridae The Ormyridae are a small family of parasitic wasps in the superfamily Chalcidoidea. They are either parasitoids or hyperparasitoids on gall-forming insects, primarily cynipid ...

'') are cosmopolitan, except almost entirely absent from

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

. They are best recognized by distinctive scalloped sculpturing of their

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 cir ...

tergite 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 'mar ...

External links

Universal Chalcidoidea Database
Chalcidoidea Taxa named by Arnold Förster Apocrita families {{Chalcidoidea-stub