Corresponding author: James Whitfield (jwhitfie@life.illinois.edu)
Academic editor: K. van Achterberg
A new species of the rarely collected neotropical microgastrine braconid wasp genus
Carrington-Hoekstra P, Fernandez-Triana J, Dyer LA, Whitfield J (2023)
The braconid parasitoid wasp subfamily
The new reared species was discovered via the Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes in Ecuador project, with fieldwork involving researchers from around the world for identification and description of host plants, caterpillars, and parasitoids. To date the project has produced 10,091 adult parasitoids, 3,648 of which are braconids belonging to 37 genera. For some genera, the project is greatly expanding knowledge of host biology over what was previously known from other regions.
The genus
Adult parasitoids were reared from externally feeding larval
Immature
When wasps emerged from any stages of lepidopteran hosts, they were killed and preserved directly into 95% ethanol. Data labels were included in the specimen vials with the full locality, dates of collection and emergence, and the collector’s name. Rearing containers were checked frequently in order to find the parasitoids while they were still alive. Caterpillar remains were preserved when possible and were not detached from the substrate if they were attached.
Examination and photography of the Ecuador specimens was conducted with a Leica M205 C stereomicroscope fitted with a five-megapixel Leica DFC 425 digital microscope camera. Image stacking was performed using a motor drive on the scope and Zerene Stacker software v. 2.0 (
The large body size, antennae with placodes mostly irregularly arranged on flagellomeres or in three disorganized rows, mostly highly polished body, large well-defined fore wing areolet, reduced and poorly set off hind wing vannal lobe, and elongate hourglass-shaped and relatively narrow first metasomal tergite combined with triangular second mediotergite clearly placed the species within
The two males available are extremely similar despite arising from different rearings in different years. The paratype male is slightly larger than the holotype.
Unidentified species of
Host and host plant of
From the Latin “nigricans”, meaning “blackish”. JFT and JBW have seen additional undescribed species of
Despite the dramatically different color combination and pattern, this new species is not strikingly different morphologically from
Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 barcode sequence (sequence code BCNCC047-22 in the Barcode of Life (
LAD and JBW thank the National Science Foundation for funding the Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes in Ecuador project under grants DEB 0346712, DEB 0717402, DEB 1020510, DEB 1146119 and EN 2133818. We thank Wilmer Simbaña for collection and rearing specimens. PC-H and JBW would like to thank Dr Joshua Gibson for assistance with the photography and image-stacking in Illinois.