Description
This dataset draws on more than 7000 occurrence records of hibernating Ichneumonid wasps across the Western Palearctic. Collected between 2010 and 2025, the data comes from a range of resources, including literature, expert observations, museum specimens and citizen science portals.
Nearly 2000 of those occurrence records were already available on GBIF: exactly 1966 records from 27 external datasets are referenced via a derived dataset (https://doi.org/10.15468/dd.4zn3wj). In addition, this new dataset contributes the 5000-some previously unpublished occurrences, organized at two technical levels: 4774 selected records within the Occurrence extension and the remaining 681 records grouped by taxon and country within the Species Distribution extension. Collectively, this dataset contains data on hibernating traits for 340 Ichneumonid wasp species known to undergo adult-free living diapause in the Western Palearctic region.
Technically, this new dataset is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive and includes for each species (in the Taxon Core) available data on overwintering stage (in the Taxon Description Extension), hibernaculum type, country code, references, source and other relevant terms (in Occurrence or Species Distribution Extension).
We have released this dataset to the public domain under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-NC 4.0) implying that users of data make proper reference to this dataset. Besides, it is used in the published paper (https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.13.e176441) cataloguing all original data.
Data Records
The data in this checklist resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 341 records.
3 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Verheyde F, De Ketelaere A, Ørsnes G, Pénigot W, Storey M, Österblad I, Cameron A, Engan G, Fiala M, Lutz J, Parkhomenko M, Gokhman V E, Dekoninck W, Cooleman S (2026). Hibernating Ichneumonidae records in the Western Palearctic. Version 1.5. Belgian Biodiversity Platform. Checklist dataset. https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=hibernating-ichneumonidae-west-palearctic&v=1.5
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Belgian Biodiversity Platform. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: c90a8067-b140-452a-80ef-44a861941473. Belgian Biodiversity Platform publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
Keywords
Checklist; Darwin wasps; hibernation; diapause; overwintering
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2240-9689
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Curator entomology collections
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- User
Geographic Coverage
Western Palearctic Region
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [12.392, -32], North East [82, 70] |
|---|
Taxonomic Coverage
This dataset contains 341 taxa, including 340 species (using free-living adult diapause) according to Verheyde et al. (2025), of which the current GBIF taxonomic backbone lists 339 as species and one as subspecies, i.e. Ichneumon (haemorrhoicus) crassigena Kriechbaumer, 1890. Besides, this dataset includes only one taxonomically recognized subspecies—Stenichneumon culpator adsentator (Tischbein, 1881)—reflecting a consensus across the major taxonomic authorities cited.
| Phylum | Arthropoda |
|---|---|
| Class | Insecta |
| Order | Hymenoptera |
| Family | Ichneumonidae |
Temporal Coverage
| Formation Period | Before 1790 until 2025-03-21 |
|---|
Sampling Methods
Counting all individuals seen in hibernation and registering them on online citizen science portals or making individual notes. Collecting individuals when necessary for final identification.
| Study Extent | All data consists of hand-caught specimens. They were caught or photographed in hibernaculum, their overwintering place, in the field. |
|---|
Method step description:
- An extensive search is conducted for multiple sources that describe Ichneumonidae in diapause in the Western Palearctic region, especially scientific literature, citizen science portals, museum collections, etc. partially during identification or validation by experts. Experts aggregate additional unpublished records from the field. Data is compiled in Excel.
- Taxonomic experts are contacted and have addressed noticeable gaps (mainly related to identification) in the dataset by providing personal data.
- Based on that Excel sheet, Darwin Core data files are created through data wrangling in R, uploaded and documented with metadata in the IPT of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
- The dataset is published and registered with GBIF.
Additional Metadata
We would like to thank anyone external to the authors who contributed data to make this dataset and paper. For a more extensive list of acknowledgements, we refer to the paper.
| Alternative Identifiers | c90a8067-b140-452a-80ef-44a861941473 |
|---|---|
| https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=hibernating-ichneumonidae-west-palearctic |