Chrysis scutellaris Fabricius, 1794

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 : 56-57

Taxon classification Animalia Hymenoptera Chrysididae

Chrysis scutellaris Fabricius, 1794

Chrysis scutellaris Fabricius, 1794: 458.

Chrysis segmentata Dahlbom, 1829: 9.

Diagnosis.

Length 6-9 mm. The species is easily recognised due to its unique colouration among North European chrysidids. The head and the mesosoma are mainly blue or green, but the meso- and metascutellum are red or golden. Usually also the frons, the anterior margin of the pronotum and the lateral sections of the mesoscutum have golden or coppery reflections. The metasoma is dorsally red, but the apical rim of T3 is contrastingly blue. The apical teeth are shallow and indistinct, whereby the apical rim may appear nearly rounded.

Distribution.

Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden. Rare. Only a few records from Denmark and Sweden (Scania) and one record from Lithuania are known ( Orlovskytė et al. 2010, Sörensson et al. 2012). - West Palearctic: Europe and northern Africa ( Linsenmaier 1997, 1999).

Biology.

Habitat: xerothermic sparsely vegetated sandy areas, often close to seashore. Adults often bask on sun-exposed pieces of wood or logs on the sand, and spend nights inside hollow plant stems ( Sörensson et al. 2012). Occasionally they are found on flowers of Apiaceae , Asteraceae , Crassulaceae and Euphorbiaceae ( Trautmann 1927, Heinrich 1964, Linsenmaier 1997, Rosa 2004). Flight period: late June to early August. Host: probably Megachile leachella Curtis ( Megachilidae ) ( Sörensson et al. 2012). In central Europe, also Pseudanthidium lituratum (Panzer) ( Megachilidae ) ( Schmid-Egger et al. 1995).

Remarks.

Mitochondrial DNA sequences available at the Barcode of Life Data System ( Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007) indicate that Swedish specimens of Chrysis scutellaris differ genetically remarkably from central European specimens. The status of European populations should be studied more in the future.