Palparini Navás, 1912

Badano, Davide & Pantaleoni, Roberto Antonio, 2014, The larvae of European Myrmeleontidae (Neuroptera), Zootaxa 3762 (1), pp. 1-71 : 9

Tribe Palparini Navás, 1912

Diagnosis of 3 rd instar larva. Head capsule with protruding ocular tubercles; mandibles armed with three to five teeth; labial palpi four articulated, at least as long as the basal width of the mandible. Thorax with pedunculated setiferous processes; abdomen with sessile setiferous processes. VIII abdominal sternite equipped with large odontoid processes; IX abdominal sternite wider than long, characterized by the presence of fossoria.

Remarks. Fossoria are an exclusive character of later larval stages while 1 st instar larvae are equipped with short rastra bearing four pairs of digging setae.

Biological notes. Large ambush hunter predators able to move both forward and backward.

Comments. This tribe is exclusively distributed in the Old World and it is particularly diverse in the Afrotropical region, where most of species are located. The larvae of very few species are known and even less of them are adequately described, making difficult to compare the larval characters of tribe. The fossoria are the main apomorphic characters.