Phylogeny of Evanioidea (Hymenoptera, Apocrita), with descriptions of new Mesozoic species from China and Myanmar

Abstract

The phylogeny of the superfamily Evanioidea is presented using morphology and DNA sequence data of selected extant and fossil genera by employing two phylogenetic methods, maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference. Based on our new results, the monophyly of Evanioidea is corroborated. Evanioidea, Anomopterellidae, Othniodellithidae, Andreneliidae and Evaniidae are monophyletic families, while Praeaulacidae, Aulacidae, Baissidae and Gasteruptiidae are paraphyletic families. In addition, four new genera (Sinuevania gen.n., Curtevania gen.n., Exilaulacus gen.n., Heterobaissa gen.n.) with five new species (Sinuevania mira sp.n., Curtevania enervia sp.n., Exilaulacus loculatus sp.n., Exilaulacus latus sp.n., Heterobaissa apetiola sp.n.), and five additionally new species (Newjersevania longa sp.n., Newjersevania brevis sp.n., Cretevania tenuis sp.n., Cretevania venae sp.n., Praeaulacus rectus sp.n.) and one new combination [Cretevania mitis (Li, Shih & Ren, 2014a) comb.n.] are described based on well-preserved fossils from the Middle Jurassic Jiulongshan Formation in Inner Mongolia, China, the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation in Liaoning, and mid-Cretaceous amber from Myanmar. This study documents the diversification of one major lineage of the mid-Mesozoic parasitoid revolution that dramatically changed food-web relationships in terrestrial ecosystems.This published work has been registered in ZooBank, http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid: zoobank.org:pub:CBC04ADA-0176-402D-9B43-E1B3CDA080E1.

New evanioid wasps (Hymenoptera: Praeaulacidae, Aulacidae) from Cenomanian Burmese amber

“…Electrofoenus in the pronotum striate, the more tubular gaster, and the fore wing with 2M+Cu present, 1M about half as long as 1Rs, 2Rs+M distinctly shorter, and 2Rs more than twice as long as 1Rs (thus second submarginal cell distinctly larger; refer to Cockerell, 1917c;Li et al, 2018). It is more similar to Electrofoenops in the presence of vein 2M+Cu and 2m-cu meeting second submarginal cell after midlength.…”

“…Molecular and morphological studies strongly support the monophyly of the Evanioidea (Dowton and Austin, 1994;Dowton et al, 1997;Vilhelmsen et al, 2010;Heraty et al, 2011;Sharkey et al, 2012;Klopfstein et al, 2013;Payne et al, 2013;Li et al, 2018). And the monophyly of its constituent families are also well supported, e.g., Aulacidae (Jennings and Austin, 2000;Smith, 2001;Turrisi, 2006Turrisi, , 2007Turrisi, , 2014Turrisi et al, 2009;Turrisi and Madl, 2013), Gasteruptiidae (Jennings and Austin, 2002;Macedo, 2009Macedo, , 2011Zhao et al, 2012; van Achterberg and Talebi, 2014), Evaniidae (Deans and Huben, 2003;Deans, 2005;Deans et al, 2006;Kawada and Azevedo, 2007;Mullins et al, 2012).…”

“…The Nevaniinae have been considered a family (Nevaniidae) by , Engel (2017), and Turrisi and Ellenberger (2019), however without any clear justification. Its two constituant genera Nevania and Eonevania were retrieved nested within the Praeaulacidae in the phylogenetic analysis of the Evanioidea by Li et al (2018), hence the present treatment of this lineage as a subfamily rather than a family. The Aulacidae comprise extant and fossil species, distributed in two subfamilies Hyptiogastritinae (Engel, 2006(Engel, , 2017 and Aulacinae (Shuckard, 1841).…”

“…The Evanioidea comprises the extant families Evaniidae, Aulacidae, Gasteruptiidae, and the Mesozoic families †Praeaulacidae (including Nevaniinae, see below), †Anomopterellidae, †Andreneliidae, †Baissidae, and †Othniodellithidae (following the classification of Li et al, 2018). Evanioid wasps are easily recognizable by their articulation of the metasoma located high on the propodeum and well above the metacoxae (Goulet and Huber, 1993).…”

“…The latter are especially frequent during the Cretaceous with occurrences in amber from the Barremian of Lebanon (Deans et al, 2004;Basibuyuk et al, 2002), Albian of Spain (Peñalver et al, 2010;Pérez-de la Fuente et al, 2012), Cenomanian of Myanmar (Cockerell, 1917a(Cockerell, , 1917bBasibuyuk et al, 2000a;Engel, 2006Engel, , 2017Jennings et al, , 2013Li et al, 2013Li et al, , 2018Engel and Wang, 2016;Shih et al, 2019;Turrisi and Ellenberger, 2019) and Russia (Rasnitsyn, 1975), Turonian of the USA (Basibuyuk et al, 2000b;Engel, 2006Engel, , 2013, and Santonian of Russia (Rasnitsyn, 1975).…”