Systematic studies of coccophagine aphelinids (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) with emphasis on the enigmatic genus Coccobius

The development and implementation of cyber-infrastructure has been heralded as critical to overcoming the “taxonomic impediment” imposed on conservation and biodiversity studies. The ultimate goal is to link taxonomic information, including specimen data and peer-reviewed publications, into a global taxonomic resource available through web-based technologies. At the level of the individual taxonomic laboratory, development of an efficient “specimen pipeline” is necessary to feed data into this cyber-infrastructure. Using wasps in the family Aphelinidae, with an emphasis on examples from the genus Coccobius, we outline the specimen pipeline recently developed for our laboratory. The family Aphelinidae is a diverse group of minute chalcidoid wasps, most of which are parasitoids of sternorrhynchous Hemiptera, with Coccobius specializing on hard scale. At the core of the pipeline is a relational database built using Filemaker Pro. We describe critical junctures in the specimen pipeline, including capture of specimen-level data, photography, illustration, and DNA extraction and sequencing. We also describe some tools under development in the laboratory to automate the processes of taxonomic description and catalog production.