We Know Too Little about Parasitoid Wasp Distributions to Draw Any Conclusions about Latitudinal Trends in Species Richness, Body Size and Biology

Much has been written about latitudinal trends in parasitoid diversity and biology, though it is widely recognised that they are a comparatively poorly known group. Here I show that for both braconid and ichneumonid wasps there are highly significant relationships between body size and the mean recorded latitude of species. Numbers of species per genus (surrogates of clades) peaks in the temperate zone for both families contrasting with data from the virtually complete inventories for mammals, birds and monocot plants, suggesting massive under-description of tropical parasitoid faunas. If the ichneumonoids may be expected to show similar trends to mammals, birds and other groups, the implication is that taxonomic work both in terms of active generic revisions, but also likely, the collecting and processing of museum specimens, and selection of taxa for revision, is woefully inadequate to allow latitudinal patterns in biology to be analysed.