butterfly parasites

[Doug Yanega]

>Greetings all,
>    I have been raising leps for a few years now and have acquired quite a
>few parasites (various Diptera and Hymenoptera I believe) that emerge from
>the caterpillars and pupae.  It's time I try to identify them.  The searches
>I have run so far are a bit disappointing.  Can anyone point me to the books
>I am looking to read?  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so Western
>North American information would be best, yes?  Or can some of these be
>imported controls?

Identified to what level? You can get most insects to family with a field
guide, or one of the old standard textbooks like Borror, et al. If they're
flies, you can get them to genus using the Manual of Nearctic Diptera
(volumes 1 & 2). If they're Braconid wasps (lep parasites will be
predominantly Braconids and Ichneumonids), there is a 1997 key by Wharton,
Marsh, & Sharkey, called "Manual of the New World genera of the family
Braconidae (Hymenoptera)" - Special Publication of the Int'l Society of
Hymenopterists No. 1. Both probably require a good University library to
locate, and are rather technical, but manageable. There are some keys to
Ichneumonids, but they are much less manageable, and you should probably
abandon hope of using them. If you want to ID to species, you essentially
cannot do it yourself, unless you want to spend several years learning and
digging in museums and research literature. People who can ID parasitic
insects to species do it for a living, accordingly, and if you really want
IDs, you'll have to find one of them to do it for you.

Good luck,


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
                http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82