First fossil record of cerocephaline wasps with a description of a new genus and species from Dominican amber (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Pteromalidae: Cerocephalinae) Lars Krogmann* State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Entomology, Rosenstein 1, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany (Received 13 March 2012; final version received 12 April 2012) Dominocephala vibrissae gen. et sp. nov. is described from lower Miocene to mid-Oligocene Dominican amber. The new species represents the first fossil record of the pteromalid subfamily Cerocephalinae within the megadiverse parasitoid superfamily Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera). Selected morphological characters of the new species are discussed from a phylogenetic perspective with reference to extant cerocephaline taxa. An updated key to the genera of world Cerocephalinae is presented. D. vibrissae was trapped in resin with a number of other insects, including six specimens of ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Platypodidae), which represent a possible host species of the new species. The fossil provides a minimum age of 23– 30 Ma for the subfamily Cerocephalinae and for a potential host switch within Chalcidoidea to endophytic (wood-, cone- or seed-boring) beetles. Keywords: Dominocephala; D. vibrissae; systematic paleontology; phylogeny; lower Miocene; mid-Oligocene Introduction Cerocephalinae is a small and morphologically distinct subfamily of Pteromalidae within the megadiverse parasitoid superfamily Chalcidoidea. Worldwide, only 42 species of Cerocephalinae have been described in 13 genera (Noyes 2011). As far as known, all species are larval or pupal parasitoids of endophytic beetles, mainly Scolytidae, Curculionidae and Anobiidae. A few ceroce- phaline species (e.g. Cerocephala rufa (Walker)) seem to be facultative hyperparasitoids and have occasionally been recorded from other parasitoid wasp hosts, such as Braconidae (Ichneumonoidea) (Noyes 2011). Several species of Cerocephalinae (especially within the genera Cerocephala Westwood and Theocolax Westwood) are economically important as parasitoids of seed- or wood- boring insect pests (e.g. Flinn and Hagstrum 2002). Monophyly of Cerocephalinae seems to be undisputed (Munro et al. 2011), whereas placement in Pteromalidae is essentially a statement that the phylogenetic position of the subfamily is unknown. Pteromalidae, in its current concept, is arguably polyphyletic and essentially a taxonomic waste bucket of taxa that are provisionally classified together based on shared plesiomorphic features (see e.g. Gibson et al. 1999; Krogmann and Vilhelmsen 2006; Desjardins et al. 2007; Munro et al. 2011). Species of Cerocephalinae may be closely related to Spalangiinae and were originally classified within that subfamily (Graham 1969). Gahan (1946) treated Cerocephalinae as separate subfamily and comprehensively revised the group. Apart from Hedqvist (1969) and Bouc ˇek (1988, 1993), who described new genera from the Nearctic and the Neotropics and/or provided new synonymies, the generic classification of Cerocephalinae has remained untouched and little is known about the distribution, host biology and phylogenetic affinities of the majority of species. Inferring the phylogenetic relationships among Cer- ocephalinae and other pteromalid subfamilies is critical for reconstructing the phylogeny of Chalcidoidea and will require analyses of large morphological and molecular data sets. Another important data source are fossils, which are essential for tracing the evolution of morphological character states and can help in understanding the phylogeography of extant taxa. Because fossils also provide minimum ages for higher taxonomic entities, there is a renewed interest in them as they allow dating the deeper nodes in molecular phylogenies. For Chalcidoidea, no efforts in dating molecular phylogenies have been undertaken but there are a number of studies in which the phylogenetic relationships of fossils to extant taxa have been discussed or analysed (e.g. Darling 1996; Gibson 2008, 2009; Heraty and Darling 2009). The evolutionary history of Cerocephalinae is currently completely obscured due to the absence of known fossils. In this paper, the first fossil record of Cerocephalinae is reported and a new genus and species is described from lower Miocene to mid-Oligocene (23 – 30 Ma) Dominican amber. An updated key to the world genera of Cerocephalinae is presented. The structure of the fossil is compared to that of extant Cerocephalinae and discussed from a phylogenetic perspective. ISSN 0891-2963 print/ISSN 1029-2381 online q 2013 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2012.685729 http://www.tandfonline.com *Email: lars.krogmann@smns-bw.de Historical Biology Vol. 25, No. 1, February 2013, 43–49 Downloaded by [Lars Krogmann] at 00:12 07 January 2013