Oodera (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Ooderidae)
The enigmatic genus Oodera is a small one with 24 species described worldwide. It is among the easiest of parasitoid genera to identify because of its greatly swollen fore femora (plural of femur). In fact, in the larger specimens this feature can be seen with the naked eye. The fore tibiae are gently curved and together with the femur may fit clamp-like on the body of a prospective host. Of the latter little is known except that Oodera is sometimes found in association with the larvae of metallic wood-boring beetles (family Buprestidae). For such a small genus Oodera has caused a bit of trouble taxonomically, sometimes placed in the family Eupelmidae, sometimes assigned to the Pteromalidae. Bouček transferred Oodera from Eupelmidae to Pteromalidae, assigning tribal status to it (Ooderini) within the pteromalid subfamily Cleonyminae (a note on suffixes in the classification of animals, going from higher to lower levels of organization; -oidea indicates a superfamily, -idae, a family, -inae a subfamily, and -ini, a tribe).
It is not only Oodera that creates problems within the superfamily Chalcidoidea. The family Pteromalidae itself has become the dumping ground for species that don’t fit neatly within any of the other 21 families of the Chalcidoidea. There are many such species and, not surprisingly, compared to other families the Pteromalidae had an outsized number of subfamilies (33). Unfortunately, despite the heroic attempts to separate the species into groups based largely on morphological features (i.e. using traditional taxonomic methods), no satisfactory method could be found until advances in molecular identification (first with DNA bar codes and subsequently with more sophisticated genetic methods) became a powerful tool in sorting out the problematic Pteromalidae. As a result of recent work combining biology (particularly feeding behaviour), molecular data and morphology, what had been a superfamily of 22 families became, almost overnight, one with 45 families. Our friend Oodera, with only one genus, has been elevated to family status (Ooderidae) along with 22 other new families, all formerly subfamilies or in some cases tribes of Pteromalidae.
Credits: Dr Robert Copeland