Sub-Familv 



OPHIONINAE 



Here, no less than in the Tryphoninae, arc congregated several entirely 

 distinct groups of insects having all manner of diversified economy and 

 treated of under a common head solely for the sake of convenience, for 

 in every case the abdomen is laterally compressed at least towards its 

 apex, and the alar areolet is never pentagonal as in the Ichneunioninae 

 and the Cryptinae. To the latter Sub-family the present is related in the 

 almost invariably exserted female terebra, which character will distinguish 

 Ophioninae from Tryphoninae in that sex (though many males are very 

 similar, except in the petiolate abdomen of the former) while allving 

 them to the Pimplinae where the abdomen is almost invariably deplanate 

 and not compressed. The following tribes are, for the most part, recog- 

 nisable at a glance in the perfect state, and such meagre details of their 

 ecdysis as are available go to show that the earlier stages are not more 

 similar: some spin cocoons for their pupal state, some pass it in the 

 bodies of their victims; some are external and some internal direct 

 parasites, while others are injurious hyperparasites, destroying their fellow 

 parasitic Hymenoptera. 1 place the Ophioninae at the end of the 

 Ichneumonidae because certain Typhoninae are much too closely related 

 to Pimplinae to be far separated therefrom, and the latter again run on 

 almost imperceptibly from the Cryptinae. The Plectiscides might be 

 placed in either the present Subfamily or the Tryphoninae, for they are 

 a heterogeneous group, parts of which bear not only the characters of 

 both but are hardly distinguishable from Acrodactyla of the Pimplinae. 

 At the end of all come the Mesochorides whose areolet is unique among 

 Ichneumonidae and whose body-structure is so closely allied (at least 

 superficially) to the ]\Ieteorides as to render them a natural link between 

 Ichneumonidae and Braconidae. 



