New Campopleginae for Sweden and an interactive key to the European genera

Abstract

Darwin wasps of the subfamily Campopleginae are among the most poorly studied insect groups, which is to a large part due to inadequate identification tools. The 835 European species are classified into 41 genera, some of a somewhat unclear delimitation, and are very hard to identify using the incomplete, scattered and often poorly illustrated literature. We here assess different character systems for genus identification and provide an interactive, dynamic online key to the European genera. We apply this key to identify 3,500 specimens of the Swedish Malaise Trap Project to genus level. We then chose ten comparatively small genera for species-level identification, reporting a total of 37 species, 20 of which are new records for Sweden. The large number of species only found in a single trap location indicates that a lot remains to be discovered, even in an otherwise well-known fauna such as Sweden’s.