The genera Conobregma van Achterberg and Facitorus van Achterberg are recorded from the Afrotropical region and the Indian subcontinent, respectively, for the first time, and two new species are described and illustrated: Conobregma bradpitti Quicke & Butcher, sp. n. from South Africa and Facitorus nasseri Ranjith & Quicke, sp. n. from India. Conobregma bradpitti sp. n. is intermediate between Conobregma which was described originally from the New World, and Asiabregma Belokobylskij, Zaldivar-Riverón & Maetô, which was coined for the S. E. Asian and East Palaearctic (Japanese) species described under the name Conobregma, plus more recently discovered taxa, but the differences between these genera are few and slight. Of the four previously proposed diagnostic characters for separating Asiabregma from Conobregma, the new species shares two with each, and therefore, the two genera are formally synonymised. Facitorus was previously known only from the East Palaearctic region and from S. E. Asia (Japan, Nepal, Taiwan and Vietnam).

New distribution record, new species, new synonymy, parasitoid

The Facitorini were originally described as a tribe in the subfamily Betylobraconinae Tobias, 1979 based on the genera Facitorus van Achterberg from Nepal, China and Taiwan, Conobregma van Achterberg from the USA and Dominican Republic, and Jannya van Achterberg from Colombia and Costa Rica (van Achterberg 1995a). Despite all taxa placed in the Betylobraconinae being morphologically highly derived with robust femora, and shortened tarsi, moderately to very bulging faces, and curved fore wing vein M+CU (van Achterberg 1995a) they have subsequently been shown not to be monophyletic (Zaldivar-Riverón et al. 2006). The morphological homoplasy of these characters even led van Achterberg (1991) to place the rogadine tribe Yeliconini in the Betylobraconinae, though this arrangement was soon dropped as a result of further consideration of biological and morphological evidence. The Facitorini were transferred to the subfamily Rogadinae as a subtribe of the Yeliconini by Belokobylskij et al. (2008) on the basis of DNA sequence data and this placement has been supported by subsequent studies (Zaldivar-Riverón et al. 2009, Butcher et al. 2014, Quicke and Butcher 2015). Most recently, Butcher and Quicke (2015) formally synonymised Betylobraconinae with the Rogadinae maintaining it as a separate tribe. Unfortunately, nothing is yet known about the biology of the Facitorina though their similarity to Yelicones, which is a koinobiont larval endoparasitoid of Lepidoptera larvae concealed to some extent in silk webs, suggests that they may have similar biology.

Shortly after the original description of Conobregma, which was based on New World species, van Achterberg (1995b) added a new species from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, thus extending the apparent distribution of the genus to the Old World tropics. Discovery of additional specimens of another genus, Aulosaphobracon Belokobylskij & Long, as well as DNA sequence data led Belokobylskij et al. (2008) to coin a new genus, Asiabregma, for the Asian and East Palaearctic species that fell within van Achterberg’s concept of Conobregma. However, despite their very disjunct distribution, the two genera were only separated by four, rather weak, characters (Table 1), and the new species from S. Africa is rather intermediate. We therefore synonymise Asiabregma with Conobregma, and treat the new species under the latter name.

The holotype of C. bradpitti sp. n. is deposited in the Hymenoptera Institute Collection, Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. It was imaged using an Olympus SXZ16 microscope with automated multiple image capture at preset focal levels using an Olympus DP72 camera, and image combination using the Cell^D image processing system. The specimen was card-mounted and rather fragile but we successfully remounted it to enable more features to be seen.

The holotype of F. nasseri sp. n. is deposited in the Department of Zoology, University of Calicut, Kerala, India. It was imaged using an Leica M205A stereomicroscope with automated multiple image capture at preset focal levels using an Leica DMC 2900 camera, and image combination using the Leica Application Suite image processing system v4.7. All images were edited using Photoshop CS6 (Version 6.1) (Adobe Inc.).

Terminology follows van Achterberg (1988) except for wing venation nomenclature which follows Sharkey and Wharton (1997); see also Figure 2.2 in Quicke (2015) for comparison of wing venation naming systems.

Conobregma bradpitti sp. n. is the first record of the Facitorina from the African continent, the others occurring in the East Palaearctic, East Asia and North America (including Caribbean). The new species keys out easily to Conobregma in the generic key to Betylobraconi (as –inae) by van Achterberg (1985), but its characters are intermediate between those of Conobregma and the more recently described genus Asiabregma established by Belokobylskij et al. (2008). Originating from an intermediate location longitudinally, it may be not surprising that the new species displays a mix of character states between Conobregma and Asiabregma (Table 1). Differences between Conobregma and Asiabregma are in any case rather slight and probably would not normally be used to justify separate generic status had they not shown a disjunct distribution. With the discovery of the new species which shares two derived states with each nominal genus, we have to choose whether to arbitrarily assign it to one of them whilst keeping both separate though with reduced differences, creating a new genus for it based only on two small differences, or synonymising them. We have chosen the latter route because of the minimal differences, and therefore, we hereby formally synonymise Asiabregma Belokobylskij, 2008, with Conobregma van Achterberg, 1995.

Facitorus nasseri sp. n. is the first facitorine recorded from Indian subcontinent. The yeliconine subtribe Facitorina consists of the genera Facitorus, Conobregma and Jannya and they share the following characters; antennal sockets closer to each other than to eyes, frons without groove, antenna situated on a shelf, fore wing vein M+CU strongly curved apically (van Achterberg 1995a). Facitorus differs from the rest in having fore wing vein CU1a arising distinctly below the level of 2-CU1 and with comparatively large dorsope, but it shares a plesiomorphic character with Conobregma and Jannya of having a subposterior depression at the scutellum (Belokobylskij and Long 2005; Belokobylskij et al. 2008). All Facitorus species are distributed in the Oriental and South Palearctic Regions. The new species, F. nasseri is different from its closest relative F. superus (known from Nepal) in having the scutellum with the sub-posterior depression.

BAB and DLJQ are very grateful to Mike Sharkey (Kentucky) for making available for study many interesting braconid specimens. BAB and DLJQ would like to thank Chulalongkorn University Centenary Academic Development Project for support, and the Animal Systematic Research Unit and the Integrative Ecology Lab, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University for allowing us to use their Cell^D imaging facility. SS and APR financially supported by Department of Science and Technology, Government of India under SERB-Young Scientist Scheme (SB/YS/LS-42/2014).