Hedychridium Abeille de Perrin, 1878

Rosa, Paolo, Heim, René & Bernasconi, Marco Valerio, 2022, The Palaearctic types of Chrysididae (Insecta, Hymenoptera) deposited in the Linsenmaier collection. Part 2. Elampini: genus Hedychridium Abeille de Perrin, 1878, Zootaxa 5090 (1), pp. 1-94 : 7

Genus Hedychridium Abeille de Perrin, 1878

Hedychridium Abeille de Perrin, 1878: 3 .

Type species: Hedychrum minutum Lepeletier, 1806

(= Chrysis ardens Coquebert, 1801 ), by subsequent designation of Ashmead 1902.

Hedychridium Abeille de Perrin, 1878 is the second largest genus within the family Chrysididae , after Chrysis Linnaeus, 1761 , and the largest among the tribe Elampini , including more than 300 valid species. It is a heterogeneous genus of small to medium-sized cuckoo wasps (2.0–7.0 mm), distributed particularly in dry to arid areas of the Holarctic region. Semenov-Tian-Shanskij (1954) and Semenov-Tian-Shanskij & Nikol’skaya (1954) subdivided the genus Hedychridium into twelve genera, namely (besides Hedychridium s.str.): Actineuchrum Semenov-Tian-Shanskij,1954; Claudiola Semenov-Tian-Shanskij,1954; Colpopyga Semenov-Tian-Shanskij,1954; Cyrteuchridium Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954; Cyrteuchrum Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954; Euchridium Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954; Euchrum Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954; Homaleuchrum Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954; Irenula Semenov-Tian-Shanskij & Nikol’skaya, 1954; Zarudnidium Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954; Zarudnium Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954. Currently, only Colpopyga Semenov-Tian-Shanskij, 1954 is considered as a valid genus (Rosa 2017), as recently confirmed by means of molecular analyses ( Pauli et al. 2019). All other Semenov-Tian-Shanskij’s genera were synonymised with Hedychridium and treated as species groups by Linsenmaier (1968). The subgenus Prochridium Linsenmaier, 1968 was upgraded to genus rank by Kimsey & Bohart (1991), but we here follow Linsenmaier’s (1994, 1999) classification and consider it with subgeneric status only for practical reasons, as already did in Rosa et al. (2015).