Abstract
THE discussion in your columns as to the utility of specific characters leads me to offer a few remarks on the Mutillidæ, an interesting family of Hymenoptera. In the arid region of the United States, this family is very numerously represented, and its members may be seen running about in warm weather, especially frequenting sandy places, roads and pathways. It is not at first apparent why the species should be so numerous, living under what seem to be identical or almost identical conditions; in 1893 (Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc., xx. 343), I wrote: “It is difficult to account for the origin of so many species under conditions which can hardly at any time have been very diverse.” But the region in question is inhabited by very many species of bees, the modifications of which have relation to a varied flora, as I have illustrated by particular instances elsewhere (Proc. Ac. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1896, pp. 33–41). The various Mutillidæ are parasitic in the nests of these bees, and consequently do not live under identical conditions; we have a varied flora with its varied insect-visitors, and these with varied parasites, the whole series of phenomena intimately connected, though at first sight it would seem impossible to see any connection between the flowers and the mutillids, however indirect.
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COCKERELL, T. Specific Characters among the Mutillidæ. Nature 54, 461 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054461a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054461a0
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