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Leafmining insects are dangerous pests that reduce plant metabolic activities and can lead to desiccation and premature fall of the leaves. If leaves are seriously attacked, crops can be reduced or seedling plants even totally destroyed (Spencer, 1990).    The leaf-mining fly, Liriomyza huidobrensis has recently reached Indonesia. It has devastated many vegetables including potato, and it threatens Australia. This LucID key will help Indonesian scientists in identifications of the leaf miners natural enemy, wasp (hymenoptera) parasites. Published by: CSIRO, available in version 2 & 3 Cost: Free

The Hymenoptera (ants, bees, sawflies and wasps) are one of the ‘mega-diverse’ insect orders.

This key provides an interactive identification tool designed to identify any Australian Cynipoidea specimen to the genus group level.

Includes Fact Sheets and desciptions for Cynipoidea of Australia.

CORRECTIONS AND OMISSIONS : This is a draft key with many of the features not fully tested. If you find any errors or omissions, or can suggest any improvements please communicate these to: nicole.fisher@csiro.au

Author: Jordi Paretas-Martinez   jordi.paretas.martinez@gmail.com

This is the first key to the known genera of Australian soft scales (Sternorryncha: Coccoidea: Coccidae). About 80 described species of soft scales in 26 genera have been recorded from Australia (Ben-Dov et al. 2009). The real diversity of Australian soft scales in poorly known; most Australian specimens can not be identified to genus (Gullan and Hodgson 1998). Froggatt (1921) was the last to review the fauna comprehensively. Hodgson (1994) described and illustrated the type species of each soft scale genus recognized at that time, and provided keys to subfamilies and genera, but the keys are based on only the type species of each genus. Therefore, they fail to capture the morphological diversity in each genus and many specimens cannot be properly identified. Since 1994 a number of new Australian genera have been erected.  This key should permit relatively painless generic identification of properly slide-mounted specimens of described species known to occur in Australia. In many cases, specific identification should also be possible with this tool; several genera are monotypic, and if a dichotomous key to species was previously available for a particular group we have included it in the HTML document for each genus.  PJ Gullan and CJ Hodgson have been working for some time on a revision of the Australian soft scales. One issue in addition to undescribed taxa is that the current classification poorly reflects ancestry. This key should help you to place your query specimen in the context of the present state of classification, flawed though it may be.  All photos by T Kondo.

This is an interactive identification key to the revised, phylogenetic classification of Asilidae (robber flies, assassin flies) proposed by Dikow (2009a) with 14 recognised subfamily taxa.