Revision of the ichneumon-flies of the genus Ischyrocnemis Holmgren, 1858 with resurrection of the genus Terozoa Förster, 1869 stat. resurr. (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae)

Abstract

Genera Ischyrocnemis and Terozoa (both initially monotypic) have been synonymized by H. Townes (1971) and preliminary placed in the subfamily Metopiinae. The results of molecular analyses (Quicke et al. 2009) did not clarify their systematic position. In this work Terozoa Förster, 1869 gen. resurr. (=Parablastus M. Constantineanu, 1973, syn. nov.) is restored from synonyms and placed into the subfamily Tryphoninae. Terozoa includes three species: type of the genus, Terozoa quadridens Perkins, 1962 (= Parablastus bituberculatus M. Constantineanu, 1973, syn. nov.) and two more species described earlier in Parablastus – T. iberica (Kasparyan, 1999) comb. n. and T. anatolica (Gürbüz et Kolarov, 2005) comb. n. The genus Terozoa and species T. quadridens are new records for Russia (North Caucasus, Essentuki). A key to species is provided. Four new Western Palearctic species are in Ischyrocnemis: I. femorator sp. nov. (with two subspecies: Caucasian I.f. femorator subsp. nov. and I. f. turanicus subsp. nov. from Central Asia), I. kotenkoi sp. nov. from the Transcaucasia, I. nigrans sp. nov. from steppes of Eastern Ukraine, Volga region and Kazakhstan, and I. verae sp. nov. from Kopet-Dag. A key to five species of the genus is given. Ischyrocnemis is treated provisionally in Metopiinae after H. Townes (1971), G. Broad and M. Shaw (2005). The characters common for Ischyrocnemis and Metopiinae are discussed: Ischyrocnemis approaches to Metopiinae in having the face and clypeus completely fused and clypeal fovea entirely lacking, that is unusual for most of Ichneumonidae but is typical for many Metopiinae (Acerataspis, Colpotrochia, Periope, Hypsicera, Triclistus, etc.); epipleura very wide (in metopiine present in Colpotrochia, Periope, Hypsicera, Seticornuta, Triclistus, etc.). Unusual for Metopiinae 1st metasomal segment of Ischyrocnemis (without glymmae with spiracles beyond the middle, and strongly narrowed in front of spiracles) found in Periope and in many ways is similar to some other Metopiinae (in genera Apolophus, Colpotrochia).

Biological and morphological studies on the parasitoids (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae) of Aprosthema tardum (Klug) (Hymenoptera, Argidae, Sterictiphorinae) in Var, southern France

“…Egg placement on the host's head presumably dictates that the first instar T. quadridens larva must leave the eggshell and move to softer tissue before it can commence feeding. It is interesting that in none of our six female specimens (all killed by deep-freezing prior to immersion in ethanol) is there an egg exposed on the ovipositor (in three of our 6 dead specimens the egg can be discerned in the hypopygium and the stalk is just visible), unlike the several illustrations of females of Terozoa species in the literature (Kasparyan and Tolkanitz 1999;Kasparyan 2019a), which we presume must be of females that had experienced a less peaceful, chemically convulsion-inducing death. Holding the egg back in life may be necessary in view of its anchor being so tiny and stud-like: we never saw eggs held ready on the ovipositor in the living females seen searching or ovipositing, but rather it appeared to take some effort to force the egg through the hypopygium during the oviposition process, suggesting that the egg may not have fully emerged from the oviduct beforehand.…”

“…Also the male of T. anatolica has yellow marks at the upper corners of the clypeus and in the lower part of the inner orbits and malar space (face completely black in male T. quadridens; only the clypeus with a yellow band, which is also present but nearly broken centrally in the male paratype of T. anatolica). The Transcaucasian T. iberica, which is much more richly yellowish marked, as illustrated by Kasparyan (2019a), can also be excluded. Accepting our species as T. quadridens refutes Kasparyan's (2019a) synonymization of T. bituberculata, which was based largely on his assumption that there would be only one species in the relatively well-studied strictly European fauna (Dmitri Kasparyan, pers.…”

“…Whether the uncertainty has been compounded by the confusion between Ischyrocnemis (Ctenopelmatinae) and Terozoa (Tryphoninae) is unclear but possible. The two were regarded as synonyms since Townes (1971) [despite Perkins 1962] until Kasparyan (2019a) resolved the matter. At species level our determination of I. goesi is based on the key to the five Eurasian species given by Kasparyan (2019a), of which only I. goesi is known in Western Europe.…”

“…44, but see below). Kasparyan (2019a), in a paper treating both Terozoa and Ischyrocnemis at species level, resurrected Terozoa from the synonymy of Ischyrocnemis, recognised Terozoa as a genus of Tryphonini, and placed Parablastus as a junior synonym of it. Because three nominal species had been described in Parablastus, new combinations were established for Terozoa bituberculata (which he synonymised with Terozoa quadridens, but see below), T. iberica (Kasparyan, 1999) and T. anatolica (Gürbüz & Kolarov, 2005).…”

A new Darwin wasp genus, Soliga (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Metopiinae), from India

“…Later, Aubert (2000) transferred Ischyrocnemis and Bremiella to Tryphoninae Shuckard, 1840 and Ctenopelmatinae Förster, 1869, respectively. Kasparyan (2019) transferred Ischyrocnemis back to Metopiinae. But recently Shaw et al (2022) included Ischyrocnemis within the Ctenopelmatinae.…”