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Mutillidae

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Mutillidae

[myü′til·ə‚dē]
(invertebrate zoology)
The velvet ants, a family of hymenopteran insects in the superfamily Scolioidea.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Mutillidae

 

(velvet ants), a family of Aculeata. The males are winged, while the females are without wings and resemble ants. The body is highly chitinized. It is densely covered with black, red, golden, and white hairs, usually arranged in a spotted or banded pattern. There are about 3,000 species, which are distributed mainly in the tropics. The larvae parasitize the larvae of wasps and bees. Female Mutillidae invade the nests of insect hosts and deposit an egg on the adult larva. The Mutillidae larva then eats the host larva and pupates in its chamber. One species of Mutillidae parasitizes the pupae of the tsetse fly.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive
Young, which compiled at least 21 of the 25 species recorded, again suggesting focused efforts in a county can reveal the highest velvet ant diversity.
Historical biogeography of the arid-adapted velvet ant Sphaeropthalma arota (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae) reveals cryptic species.
Revision of Velvet Ant Genus Dilophotopisis Schuster (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae) by using molecular and morphological data, with implications for desert biogeography.
Velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae) are small to fairly large, often brightly colored and hairy, solitary wasps that can often be found walking along sandy soils during the late spring and summer in North America.
Velvet ants, past and present: a county-wide checklist of the distribution and diversity of mutillidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) in Oklahoma including two new state records, and new behavioral observations for Dasymutilla foxi (Cockerell)
Velvet ants did not seem to be affected by our presence or that of the light.
Following their collection, female velvet ants were sorted to genus and morphospecies at Utah State University.
Nectaring by nocturnal velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae)
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