Content Revised and Expanded by Michael W. Gates
Clickable Image Map of Assorted Eurytomidae
Introduction
Eurytomidae contains >1400 that are phytophagous, entomophagous, or both. Some Eurytoma species and at least one species of Rileya (Hawkins & Goeden 1984) are known to feed on plant tissues before and/or after devouring the insect host. Unfortunately the distinctions between genera are not always clear and the limits of subfamilies are a matter of conjecture. Boucek (in Peck, et al. l964) recognized 2 subfamilies. Burks (1971a) arranged the world genera in 8 subfamilies, but was unable to produce a key which showed these to be natural groupings. Subba Rao (1978, on the
advice of Boucek) recognized 2 subfamilies. Stage and Snelling (1986) recognized
3. Most recently Zerova (1989) recognized 7 subfamilies while Boucek (1988)
reiterated the position of Stage and Snelling (1986). We adopt this latter
work as being the most phylogenetically reasonable and treat 3 subfamilies
in this handbook. DiGiulio (in Gibson, et al. 1997) provided
keys and information to the Nearctic genera of this family. Information
for Nearctic members of the family is as follows:
Rileyinae: 2 genera, 11 species. Rileya was revised by Gahan (1918) and Macrorileya has only 1 known species (this genus appears to be a member of Eurytominae rather than Rileyinae).STATISTICS: Number of world species: >1400 (250 Nearctic); number of world genera: about 87 (20 Nearctic).
Heimbrinae: 1 genus, 1 species. Heimbra and Symbra are the only two genera in Heimbrinae and were revised by Stage and Snelling (1986) who discussed and gave keys to 5 additional species in the Neotropics.
Eurytominae: 20 genera, 237 species. Of these species, at least 92 belong to Eurytoma, the most commonly taken genus of the family. In 1967 Bugbee revised this group. The genus Tetramesa (64 species) was revised for the Nearctic Region some time ago (Phillips and Emery 1919, Phillips 1936). Formerly, the synonym Harmolita saw wide use in the literature as a replacement name for Isosoma, but both have since been synonymized under Tetramesa (Claridge 1958). This genus has been called both Harmolita and Tetramesa; the Europeans generally use the latter (and correct) name and Americans the former. The genus Sycophila contains 40 species and was revised in 1932 by Balduf (as Eudecatoma). The largely Neotropical genus Bephratelloides (with 1 Nearctic species) was revised by Grissell and Schauff (1990) with revisions by Grissell and Foster (1996).