The family Eurytomidae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) is a nightmare from the taxonomic/systematic perspective and could be considered a "poster child" of nomenclatural instability and non-monophyly in Chalcidoidea. Problems in identification, recognition of taxa and character homologization result from rampant homoplasy and symplesiomorphy throughout Eurytomidae. This is caused by, at least in part, exceedingly plastic, intergrading characters. Scoring morphological features across Chalcidoidea is extremely difficult given the vast differences seen in putatively homologous structures. Even at the localized family- or subfamily-level scale (as exemplified by Eurytomidae), questions of monophyly of included taxa and uncertain outgroup relationships continue to cause problems in morphological character state assessment. Molecular data are not immune from this effect as the 28S-D2 region corroborates the difficulties encountered in the morphological assessment of Eurytomidae, specifically in that family-level and some subfamily-level taxa are non-monophyletic. The exploration of novel or little used morphological character systems could potentially provide useful information to further our knowledge of these grade-level taxa and provide the foundation upon which assertions of phylogeny, evolutionary trends and character polarity in Chalcidoidea must be based.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Eurytomidae
Keywords: Chalcidoidea, characters
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