Cheloninae Nees, 1816

Belokobylskij, Sergey A., Nel, André, Waller, Alain & Plöeg, Gael De, 2010, New fossil non-cyclostome braconid wasps from the lowermost Eocene amber of Paris Basin, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 55 (3), pp. 519-527 : 524

Subfamily Cheloninae Nees, 1816

Remarks.—The subfamily Cheloninae is one of the most specialised groups within the braconid wasps of the non−cyclostome phylogenetic branches. Members of this subfamily are koinobiont egg−larval parasitoids of Lepidoptera and are easily recognised by the coarsely sclerotised and immovably fused three anterior metasomal tergites, the presence of the postpectal carina and by some features of the fore wing venation. More than 15 genera from five tribes of this subfamily are known in the world fauna and only five of which are distributed in the Palaearctic region ( Zettel 1990).

The fossil chelonine parasitoids are particularly common as inclusions in the Eocene Baltic amber ( Brues 1933; Tobias 1987), and nearly all of these are members of the genus Ascogaster . A few members of the genera Chelonus , Phanerotoma , and endemic Diodontogaster are also recorded in ambers and rocks. The fossil genus Chelonohelcon has been transferred to Cheloninae within the monogeneric tribe Chelonohelconini ( Tobias 1987) . Probably Anacanthobracon , described originally in the subfamily Doryctinae , is an additional genus of this tribe (Belokobylskij in press).