Taxonomy of parasitoid wasps in China: An overview

• We outline the taxonomic studies on parasitoid wasps in China for the first time.
• We provide a brief history of the studies of parasitoid wasps in China.
• We list the people, institutions and taxonomic groups involved in China.

The parasitoid Hymenoptera are one of the most important groups of natural enemies of agriculture and forestry pests and have been used as biological control agents in IPM programs for a long time. The systematic research on parasitoids and their associations with hosts lays a solid base for biological control of pests. Here we summarize the taxonomic studies undertaken on the parasitoid wasps in China in the last eight decades. At present about 48 families in 12 superfamilies of parasitoid Hymenoptera are known in China, of which the majority of the families have been studied to some extent while a number of them are still poorly studied. Around 6000 species of 32 families which dealt with in this paper are known in China, and some of them have been successfully and widely used in the existing biological control while others are potentially useful in future biocontrol program. This overview provides the international audience a general idea about the current state of the systematic study of parasitoid Hymenoptera conducted in China, the known species of parasitoids and the native and introduced species used in biocontrol in China.

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