Archaeoteleia

Early, J. W., Masner, L. & Johnson, N. F., 2007, Revision of Archaeoteleia Masner (Hymenoptera: Platygastroidea, Scelionidae)., Zootaxa 1655, pp. 1-48 : 2

[[ Genus Archaeoteleia Masner ]]

The fossil record of the family Scelionidae (Hymenoptera: Platygastroidea) dates back to the mid Cretaceous (Nel & Azar 2005; Johnson et al. in press). Very few of the genera, however, have disjunct distributions characteristically associated with continental drift. The genus Archaeoteleia Masner is one prominent exception, exhibiting a transantarctic distribution, being found only in New Zealand and the Valdivian forests of Chile.

In the years since Archaeoteleia was originally described by Masner (1968), numerous specimens have been collected, and the species richness of the genus is significantly greater than indicated in the published literature.