By ANNE BESTON environment reporter
A family of tiny wasps which were probably buzzing around in the dinosaur age has been discovered by New Zealand scientists.
The native wasp, smaller than a ladybird but as old as the tuatara, is found nowhere else in the world, says the Auckland Museum curator of
entomology, John Early.
The wasps, which are stingless, probably evolved in isolation along with other unique native plants and animals when this country broke away from the supercontinent Gondwana about 80 million years ago, he says.
New species of wasp are regularly discovered around the world but finding a whole new family is "a bit like finding a lost tribe in the jungle," Mr Early says.
The wasp family has been named Maaminga, which in Maori means puzzling, mystifying or trickster.
That's because the origins of the wasp have bamboozled international bug experts for nearly 20 years, Mr Early says.
It was not until a Canadian colleague visited Waipoua Forest in Northland with Mr Early in 1983 and captured some of the tiny insects that a concerted attempt began to identify them. But even with four entomologists on the case, the puzzle took years to solve.
"Even a colleague in Moscow who specialised in fossilised insects had never seen anything like it before," Mr Early says.
"They seemed to be composite of two unrelated wasp groups, having the front end of one and the back end of another."
The wasps live mainly in leaf litter, have very limited flying ability and are a "nondescript brown."
The entomology team's findings will be published for Australia's leading scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
