34 PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEB., 1922 



species may be looked for in other families and that ultimately 

 phytophagy may prove to be much more common than at 

 present suspected. 



Seed-chalcids and joint- worm flies are by no means the only 

 phytophagic forms. Certain species are definitely stated to be 

 makers of galls, the galls in some instances at least showing a 

 marked resemblance to Cynipid galls. Other species are said 

 to bore in plant tissue much as do certain Coleoptera, Diptera, 

 and Lepidoptera. 



The list of food plants is a varied one. Species are shown 

 to infest seeds of such widely different groups of plants as 

 Leguminaceae, Lauraceae, Pomaceae, Rosaceae, Myrtaceae, 

 Vitaceae,Mimosaceae, and Anacardiaceae, as well as the various 

 groups of conifers. The so-called joint worms are found attack- 

 ing a long list of grains and grasses and a new species described 

 herewith infests the young stems of bamboo. The gall-makers 

 are found on Acacia, Eucalyptus, Asparagus, Scutia, and on 

 other unnamed plants. Of the species which may be classed as 

 borers, one infests orchids, another lives in the fleshy part of 

 juniper berries, while still another is said to bore under the 

 bark of Eucalyptus. 



Thus it will be seen that both in manner of living and in 

 the matter of food plants the phytophagous Chalcidoidea 

 exhibit no small degree of adaptability. So far as known none 

 of the species feed as exposed larvae, all being internal feeders 

 in the larval state. Doubtless this will prove to be an invariable 

 rule since the structure of the larva would need to be greatly 

 modified from the usual type in order to enable it to exist as an 

 external feeder. With this single limitation there seems to be 

 no good reason why they should be confined in their activity 

 to the few modes of living which have been enumerated. It 

 would appear entirely within the range of probability that 

 species may yet be found duplicating in their modes of living 

 many of the other internally feeding insects of other orders. 

 For example, many species of Chalcidoidea are parasitic upon 

 leaf-mining hosts, and, in the light of what has already been 

 shown, it would not be surprising eventually to discover a 

 Chalcidoid which is itself a genuine leaf-miner. 



It may be noted here that not only are the phytophagous 

 forms distributed through a number of families but in many 

 cases they apparently do not offer even minor group characters 

 which will permit them to be differentiated even generically from 

 species known to be parasitic. Thus we find phytophagous 

 species of the genus Eurytoma which can be separated specifically 

 only with great difficulty from forms known to be parasitic upon 

 Lepidoptera, Diptera, and Coleoptera. The genera Synfomaspis, 

 Callimome, Megastigmus, and Tetrastichus each contains both 



