Agaonidae

Agaonidae is a family of chalcidoid wasps commonly known as fig wasps, best known for their specialized and obligate mutualism with fig trees (genus Ficus). Members of the family are tiny, often only a few millimeters long, and exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism; males are frequently wingless and remain inside the fig inflorescence (syconium) while females are winged and disperse to find new figs.

Biology and life cycle center on the syconium, a hollow inflorescence that houses many small flowers. A fertilized female enters through a narrow ostiole to oviposit and, in the process, transfers pollen either passively or via specialized pollen-carrying structures. Larvae develop within galls induced in the fig’s flowers. Males typically mate with females inside the syconium, help females exit by chewing exit holes, and rarely leave the fig themselves.

Agaonidae are primarily tropical and subtropical in distribution, reflecting the range of their host figs. The family includes numerous genera and hundreds to over a thousand species, depending on taxonomic treatments. Their long-term coevolution with Ficus has made them a model system for studying coevolution, speciation, and mutualism, with many fig species exhibiting tight species-specific relationships to particular agaonid pollinators.

Non-pollinating fig wasps, which exploit figs without providing pollination, belong to several other chalcidoid lineages and can influence fig–wasp dynamics. Agaonidae are ecologically important as pollinators in many forest ecosystems and have contributed to broader understanding of mutualistic and host-specific plant–insect interactions.