Abernessia is a genus of large, handsome spider wasps (Pompilidae) endemic to Brazil. Four species are currently known. The first species, Abernessia irmgardae, was described in 1947 based on a single female from Rio de Janeiro (Arlé 1947). It was not until 2011 that a second species, A. prima, was discovered, based on a single male specimen from Mucugê, Bahia (Waichert & Pitts 2011). Waichert and Pitts (2013) described two new Abernessia species based on specimens found in museum collections. A. capixaba is known from 4 males from Espírito Santo discovered in the collection of the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, and A. giga is known from a single female from Minas Gerais discovered in the collection of the Zoological Museum of the University of Copenhagen.A. capixabaandA. gigaresemble A. irmgardae and A. prima respectively, and could be the as yet unknown sexes of these species. But there are also morphological differences that indicate that there are indeed four separateAbernessiaspecies(Waichert & Pitts 2011).
