LIBRARY

654 COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
Dalman were formerly believed to be phytophagous, seed-infesting chalcids of
conifers, but it is now generally thought that certain species are phytophagous
and others are parasitic - the latter also on gallwasps. Syntomaspis druparum
Boheman infests apple seeds in North America and Europe. By far the greater
number of genera and species are parasitic and hyperparasitic on eggs, larvre,
and pupre of HYMENOPTERA (gallwasps, jointworms, and rarely bees).
LEPIDOPTERA. DIPTERA, and the eggs of MANTODEA.
Family AGAONTID1E 1 Walker 1846 (Ag'a-on'ti-dce, from the Greek a-yOJ.LaL,
to wonder at; because of the remarkable appearance of the male and the
complicated life histories of these insects). Fig Wasps.
Minute to small, highly specialized wasps, 2-3 mm. long, inhabiting the fruits
of various kinds of figs and normally rearing the young in the seeds. The females
are black, winged; head
grooved down the middle or
around the antennre; antennre 9to
I3-segmented and with long
scape; eyes and ocelli present,
tarsi usually five-segmented.
The males are queer looking,
pale-colored; apterous; exceedingly
small, blind; with short.
three- to nine-segmented antennre;
minute undeveloped
middle legs which are absent
altogether in some species; fore
tibia with large curved spur;
tarsi three- to five-segmented.
FIG. 228. The adull winged female and apterous The females move from tree to
male of the fig wasp, Blastapltaga psenes (Linn.).
(After Condit, 1920.)
tree in search of figs in proper
condition for fertilization while
the males remain and perish in the figs in which they were reared. In some
forms at least the females, even before they leave the seeds, are fertilized by
the curious male which is furnished with strong mandibles for making a hole in
the wall of the seed and with a long extensile abdomen. normally carried curled
beneath the body, for mating.
The best known life history is that of the important Old World economic
species commonly known as the blastophaga, Blastophaga psenes (Linn.),
which propagates in certain types of inedible Smyrna figs known as caprifigs
(Ficus carica var. sylvestri!$) which are rich in pollen. Leaving these large-seeded
fruits covered with pollen, the female enters the large edible figs (Ficus carica
var. smyrnica) and in attempting to oviposit in the seeds pollinates the latter.
Because of their very long styles. however. she is unable actually to insert her
1 From the Greek stem d:ydoJJT, hence AGAONTlDJE and not AGAONIDlE as commonly
l1lled (Tillyard 1925, p. 275).