Western Palaearctic Meteorinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) in the National Museums of Scotland, with rearing, phenological and distributional data, including six species new to Britain, and a discussion of a potential route to speciation.

Distributional, phenological and in many cases rearing data are given for 44 species of western Palaearctic Meteorinae in the genera Meteorus and Zele, from the nearly 2,500 specimens of the group present in the collection of the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. Six species are newly recorded from Britain. Patterns in the breadth of host ranges are discussed in relation to a reiterated speciation hypothesis and a recently published molecular phylogeny.