Chalcedectus

{{Short description|Family of wasps}}

{{Automatic taxobox

| image = Chalcedectus sp. 28962018 01.jpg

| image_caption = Chalcedectus sp.

| parent_authority = Ashmead, 1904

| taxon = Chalcedectus

| authority = Walker, 1852

}}

Chalcedectus is a genus of chalcid wasps, previously classified as part of the subfamily Cleonyminae, in the polyphyletic family Pteromalidae.{{Cite Q|Q115923766|doi-access=free}} It is the only genus in the monotypic family Chalcedectidae. Most species are parasitoids of wood-boring beetles.

Astrid Cruaud and coworkers found that Chalcedectus falls in what they called the "weird clade",Cruaud, A., Rasplus, J. Y., Zhang, J., Burks, R., Delvare, G., Fusu, L., ... & Heraty, J. M. (2022). The Chalcidoidea bush of life–a massive radiation blurred by mutational saturation. bioRxiv, 2022-09. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2022.09.11.507458 DOI] [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.11.507458.full.pdf PDF] but these wasps look very different from their closest relatives, the Pelecinellidae. This, along with the long time since the divergence, supports the treatment of the genus as a separate family Chalcedectidae. In his 1852 paper on chalcid wasps,Walker, Francis (1852) Notes on Chalcidites, and Descriptions of various new species. The Annals and magazine of natural history; zoology, botany, and geology (Second Series) 10. 47-48. [https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/19400#page/63/mode/1up BHL] where Francis Walker described Chalcedectus maculicornis (the type species) he stated: "This is one of the tropical forms whose characters are more compound or complicated than those of any genera which inhabit more temperate regions; and may be considered either as a connecting link between families, or as a common and governing centre, representing various remote groups, and associating them together. It comes between the Pteromalidae and the Eupelmidae, and is one of the Cleonymidae, and is most allied to Lycisca; but it has the head of Perilampus, the thoracic sculpture of the Perilampidae and the Eurytomidae, and the hind-legs of the Leucospidae and of the Chalcidae."