Hedychridium caputaureum Trautmann & Trautmann, 1919

Paukkunen, Juho, Berg, Alexander, Soon, Villu, Odegaard, Frode & Rosa, Paolo, 2015, An illustrated key to the cuckoo wasps (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae) of the Nordic and Baltic countries, with description of a new species, ZooKeys 548, pp. 1-116 : 38

Taxon classification Animalia Hymenoptera Chrysididae

Hedychridium caputaureum Trautmann & Trautmann, 1919

Hedychridium roseum var. caputaureum Trautmann & Trautmann, 1919: 35.

Hedychridium chloropygum ssp. spatium Linsenmaier, 1959: 59.

Hedychridium caputaureum : Niehuis 2001: 121.

Hedychridium chloropygum of authors, not du Buysson, 1888.

Diagnosis.

Length 5-7 mm. Together with Hedychridium roseum this species is easily differentiated from other species of the genus by its non-metallic red or orange metasoma. The head and mesosoma are mainly green or blue, but as opposed to Hedychridium roseum , the vertex, pronotum and lateral fields of the mesoscutum have coppery red colour or reflections. This coppery colour is sometimes only weakly visible. The metasoma often has weak purple reflections posteriorly. Especially in the males, the punctation of T3 and T2 is usually coarser compared to Hedychridium roseum .

Distribution.

Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden. Rare. - West Palearctic: Europe and western Asia ( Linsenmaier 1997).

Biology.

Habitat: sparsely vegetated sandy areas, dry meadows. Adults visit flowers of Apiaceae ( Kusdas and Turner 1955). Flight period: mid-June to late August. Host: Astata minor (Kohl) ( Crabronidae ) ( Linsenmaier 1968, Saure 1998, our own obs.).

Remarks.

Hedychridium caputaureum was recently considered to be a central and northern European subspecies of Hedychridium chloropygum ( Arens 2010). However, as these taxa are both well characterised and have partially overlapping distribution areas, we treat them as separate species following Paukkunen et al. (2014).