An annotated and illustrated checklist of Hong Kong aculeate wasps (Hymenoptera: Apoid wasps; Pompilioidea; Scolioidea; Thynnoidea; Tiphioidea; Vespoidea; Chrysidoidea)

Abstract

Tropical regions are home to an exuberant diversity of insect species, which unfortunately remains poorly catalogued in most regions. Here, a checklist of aculeate wasps (Hymenoptera) is presented for Hong Kong, a territory of 1100 km 2 located just below the Tropic of Cancer. To date, 350 species and morphospecies of aculeate wasps distributed across 13 families and 151 genera have been recorded for the territory and are here illustrated and discussed. Short annotations on their taxonomy (when needed), biology (if known), and on historical records are provided, complemented by distributional data. This list provides an important baseline to track the evolution of aculeate wasps in Hong Kong but also more broadly for Southeast Asia, a region of the world experiencing major anthropogenic changes of its environment and biota.