Chalcididae synonyms

The vast majority of this group, including nearly 5000 known species, are usually reckoned as a single family, the Chalcididae, comprising small insects, often of bright metallic colours, whose larvae are parasitic in insects of various orders.

They have from very early times been resorted to as a means of staining the hair of a dark colour, and they are the base of the tattooing dye of the Somali women.3 The gall-making Hymenoptera include, besides the Cynipidae proper, certain species of the genus Eurytoma (Isosoma, Walsh) and family Chalcididae, 'e.g.'

Among the numerous insects parasitic on the inhabitants of galls are hymenopterous flies of the family Proctotrypidae, and of the family Chalcididae, e.g.