TWO NEW GENERA OF DIAPRIINAE 
(DIAPRIIDAE, HYMENOPTERA) 
WITH TRANSANTARCTIC RELATIONSHIPS 
By Lubomir Masner* 
Institute of Entomology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Praha * 1 
Up to the present only a few species of proctotrupoid wasps have 
been known to have transantarctic relationships. The peculiar family 
Monomachidae is represented both in Australia and South America 
(Schulz, 1911; Riek, 1955). Among the Proctotrupidae the genus 
Austroserphus Dodd is known from Australia (subg. Austroserphus 
s.str.) and Chile (subg. Austrocodrus Ogloblin) (Ogloblin, 1959). 
In the Scelionidae, Archaeoteleia Masner was described with one 
species from New Zealand and four species from Chile (Masner, 
1968). The subfamily Ambositrinae (Diapriidae) was shown to 
be of southern origin (Fabritius, 1968; Masner, 1969). 
The two new genera of Diapriinae (Diapriidae) described below 
are the first known representatives of this subfamily that show 
transantarctic relationships. It is believed that with better knowl- 
edge of Australian and Neotropic Proctotrupoidea more examples of 
transantarctic relationships will be discovered. The aim of this 
paper is to challenge other students in this group to give some 
attention to this phenomenon in zoogeography. 
The two genera described below are also interesting from the 
point of view of morphology and adaptation. In particular, the 
Neotropic genus from Brazil displays the highest range of morpho- 
logical reduction so far discovered in the subfamily Diapriinae. The 
wingless females are in fact blind as their eyes are reduced to mere 
points and the ocelli are completely absent. In one species the 
antenna has only 9 segments and the tarsi are reduced to four seg- 
ments. This is the first known instance of a diapriid having 4- 
segmented tarsi. Although these characters appear very remarkable 
we interpret them as adaptive modifications within a very plastic 
genus. Biological data are still not available and are greatly desired 
to understand the nature of these unique adaptations. 
*This project was supported by a National Research Council grant. 
1 Present address: Pestology Centre, Department of Biosciences, Simon 
Fraser University, Burnaby 2, British Columbia, Canada. 
