BIOLOGICAL AND TAXONOMIC INVESTIGATIONS ON 

 THE MUTILLID WASPS 



By Clarence E. Mickel 



Of the University of Minnesota 



PART 1 

 BIOLOGY OF THE MUTILLID WASPS 



When Linnaeus published the tenth edition of Systema Naturae 

 in 1758, he inchided eight species in his genus Mutill-a. Two of 

 these species were later shown to belong to the Ichneumonidae. 

 Two of the six remaining species were known before the publica- 

 tion of this work. Petiver had figured the female of occidentalis 

 from North America as early as 1703, and Uddmann had figured 

 the female of eurapaea in 1753, giving it the name of "Apis aptera." 

 The Mutillids were regarded as social insects during most of the 

 eighteenth century, i^rincipally on account of the similarity of 

 appearance between them and the ants, which were known to be 

 social, and because of the lack of any empirical data on the subject. 



Hundreds of new species of Mutillids were discovered during the 

 latter half of the eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the first part of 

 the twentieth centuries by Fabricius, 01i^■ier, Lucas, Burmeister, 

 Gerstaecker, Radoszkowski, Andre, Cameron, Bingham, and Bischoff 

 in Europe, Peringuey in Africa, and by Cresson, Blake, and Fox 

 in the United States. It is estimated that 3,500 to 4,000 species 

 have now been described, the great majority of them in the single 

 genus MtitiUa. Practically nothing was done to subdivide this 

 great mass of species, and to recognize genera with narrower limits 

 until the beginning of the twentieth century, although Blake (1871) 

 and Eadoszkowski (1885) made an attempt in this direction, only 

 to have their work disregarded and the species returned to the 

 genus Mutilla by later workers. Ashmead (1899, 1903) and Andre 

 (1903a) were the first to attempt a general classification of the 

 family and proposed many new genera. Bischoff (1920) also pro- 

 posed many new genera in his treatment of the African species of 

 Mutillidae. The genera which have been proposed up to the present 

 time number about 100. 



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