Research Projects

Global diversity of predatory wasps belonging to family Crabronidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) comprises of more than 9000 extant species (Pulawski, 2024). Being one of the speciose families in order Hymenoptera, more than 550 species and 24 subspecies were described from India till date (Rameshkumar et al. 2023). The family is significantly diverse in many aspects, such as life history, prey selection, behavior, host specificity and morphological characteristics. Adult wasps are known for feed on variety of food including spiders and insects across several agriculturally important orders such as Orthoptera, Hemiptera and Micro Lepidoptera. Some wasps were found specifically provisioning on the larvae that can be helpful in managing through biocontrol programmes (Ashmed, 1894; Bohart & Menke, 1974). The family comprises of 8 subfamilies, 19 tribes and 250 genera. most of the historical contributions on Indian fauna were by foreign authors in pre-independence era: Fabricius (1781); Bingham (1897); Cameron (1904) with scanty of work post-independence period mainly by Leclercq (1956, 1958, 1999 and 2009); Tsuneki (1974); Krombein (1984) but without illustrations, taxonomic keys and scanty comprehensive information. In this study, species of Crabronidae with special emphasis to Crabroninae, Bembicinae, Pemphredoninae and Philanthinae and allied taxa will be collected, documented and characterized using morphological and molecular characters. Apart from these, Phylogenetic relationships between various taxa will be studied using morphological characters and molecular markers. Results of this study can help to understand the biodiversity of Crabronidae mainly in Northern parts of India and also solve the complexity in phylogeny in this family. Illustrated diagnostic keys and barcodes generated out of the study will be helpful in correct identification of species.