Review of the hymenopteran fauna of New Caledonia with a checklist of species

Abstract

The hymenopteran fauna of New Caledonia is reviewed and compared with that of Australia and New Zealand, as well as other islands in the south-west Pacific. In conclusion, several different scenarios (e.g., recent dispersal events and radiations) can be used to explain the extant distribution of New Caledonian Hymenoptera. A detailed checklist of 409 species and subspecies of Hymenoptera of New Caledonia is provided, along with estimates of the undescribed fauna, and a summary of the general biology of the families represented in the region.

New species and records of Evanioidea and Stephanoidea from New Caledonia (Hymenoptera)

“…Since the publication of the checklist by Jennings et al (2013) of the species of Hymenoptera of New Caledonia, 66 species have been added to this fauna (Pauly et al 2013a(Pauly et al , 2013b(Pauly et al , 2015Kimsey 2014;Jennings et al 2015;Ramage et al 2015Ramage et al , 2019Breitkreuz et al 2016;Smith & Villemant 2017;Taylor 2018;Ortiz-Sepulveda et al 2019;Speranza et al 2019;Alencar & Azevedo 2020;Contarini et al 2020). Of these 66 species, 58 are endemic to New Caledonia.…”

“…The New Caledonian fauna of Evanioidea Latreille, 1802 and Stephanoidea Leach, 1815 has recently been studied, with three species of Aulacidae Shuckard, 1841 , four species of Evaniidae Latreille, 1802 (Balhoff et al 2013), five species of Gasteruptiidae Ashmead, 1900 (Jennings & Austin 2005;Jennings et al 2015) and four species of Stephanidae Leach, 1815 (Aguiar & Jennings 2005) known from this territory. Additionally, a summary of the hymenopteran fauna of New Caledonia was provided by Jennings et al (2013).…”

The Aculeata of French Polynesia. III. Sphecidae, with the record of three new species for the Society Islands (Hymenoptera)

“…californicum is an inquiline of other Sphecidae genera, with females not building their own nests but instead re-using nest cells of other mud dauber species (landes et al, 1987) Comments. -Chalybion bengalense is new to New Caledonia and French Polynesia (hensen, 1988;Jennings et al, 2013;PulaWski, 2013a).…”

Two new ant species (Formicidae: Dorylinae, Ponerinae) from New Caledonia

“…Since then, most of the species described from New Caledonia were part of regional or global generic revisions (Viehmeyer 1924;Brown 1958;Wilson 1958;Brown & Kempf 1960;Bolton 2000;Baroni Urbani & de Andrade 2003;Lucky & Ward 2010;Heterick & Shattuck 2011;Shattuck 2011;Taylor 2018;Sparks et al 2019), with, however, some works focusing on New Caledonia (Brown 1948;Wilson 1957;Ward 1984). Wheeler (1935), Taylor (1987) and Jennings et al (2013) also produced local ant checklists. To date, the New Caledonian ant fauna comprises 134 species and subspecies, 55% of which apparently endemic (Antweb 2019).…”