When your posts yield biodiversity findings: social media-facilitated discovery of Eupelmus (Eupelmus) curvator Yang (Hymenoptera, Eupelmidae) in Japan with notes on its bionomics

Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 69(1): 81-92, doi: 10.3897/travaux.69.e171809

When your posts yield biodiversity findings: social media-facilitated discovery of Eupelmus (Eupelmus) curvator Yang (Hymenoptera, Eupelmidae) in Japan with notes on its bionomics

Taisuke Kawano^‡, Shunsuke Imada^§, Shogo Noguchi^|, Kanji Toyosaki^¶

‡ The Kyushu University Museum, Fukuoka, Japan§ Museum Studies Research Group, Lake Biwa Museum, Kusatsu, Japan| School of Systems Life Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan¶ Unaffiliated, Tokyo, Japan

Corresponding author: Taisuke Kawano ( eupelmidae@gmail.com )

Academic editor: Ionut Stefan Iorgu

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Kawano T, Imada S, Noguchi S, Toyosaki K (2026) When your posts yield biodiversity findings: social media-facilitated discovery of Eupelmus (Eupelmus) curvator Yang (Hymenoptera, Eupelmidae) in Japan with notes on its bionomics. Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 69(1): 81-92. https://doi.org/10.3897/travaux.69.e171809

Abstract

The eupelmid wasp, Eupelmus (Eupelmus) curvator Yang, 1996 (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae), is newly recorded from Japan. The hitherto unknown male of the species is described for the first time. Tenodera angustipennis Saussure, 1869 (Mantodea: Mantidae) is newly recorded as a host, the species being an egg parasitoid inside the ootheca (egg case). Eupelmus (Eupelmus) curvator is also confirmed as the fifth species of Eupelmus which is a parasitoid within mantis oothecae. This study was initiated by a series of posts on social media, exemplifying the recent trend of utilizing social media to aid in biodiversity research.

Keywords

distributional record, egg parasitoid, Eupelminae, host association, Mantodea, Tenodera angustipennis, Twitter, X