Revision of the species of Lytopylus from Area de Conservación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Agathidinae)

Abstract

Thirty two new species of Lytopylus (Agathidinae) are described with image plates for each species: Lytopylus alejandromasisi sp. n., Lytopylus alfredomainieri sp. n., Lytopylus anamariamongeae sp. n., Lytopylus angelagonzalezae sp. n., Lytopylus cesarmorai sp. n., Lytopylus eddysanchezi sp. n., Lytopylus eliethcantillanoae sp. n., Lytopylus ericchapmani sp. n., Lytopylus gahyunae sp. n., Lytopylus gisukae sp. n., Lytopylus guillermopereirai sp. n., Lytopylus gustavoindunii sp. n., Lytopylus hartmanguidoi sp. n., Lytopylus hernanbravoi sp. n., Lytopylus hokwoni sp. n., Lytopylus ivanniasandovalae sp. n., Lytopylus johanvalerioi sp. n., Lytopylus josecortesi sp. n., Lytopylus luisgaritai sp. n., Lytopylus mariamartachavarriae sp. n., Lytopylus miguelviquezi sp. n., Lytopylus motohasegawai sp. n., Lytopylus okchunae sp. n., Lytopylus pablocobbi sp. n., Lytopylus robertofernandezi sp. n., Lytopylus rogerblancoi sp. n., Lytopylus salvadorlopezi sp. n., Lytopylus sangyeoni sp. n., Lytopylus sarahmeierottoae sp. n., Lytopylus sergiobermudezi sp. n., Lytopylus sigifredomarini sp. n., and Lytopylus youngcheae sp. n. A dichotomous key and a link to an electronic, interactive key are included. All specimens were reared from Lepidoptera larvae collected in Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) and all are associated with ecological information including host caterpillar, collection date, eclosion date, caterpillar food plant, and locality. Neighbor-joining and maximum likelihood analyses of the barcode region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (COI DNA barcode) were conducted to aid in species delimitation.

Minimalist revision and description of 403 new species in 11 subfamilies of Costa Rican braconid parasitoid wasps, including host records for 219 species

“…COI data are not always diagnostic. In the revision of Lytopylus (Braconidae, Agathidinae) (Kang et al 2017), two of the 32 reared species from Costa Rica did not achieve a 2% COI divergence, yet they had distinct morphologies and host data. The error rate, if COI had been used exclusively for the Alabagrus and Lytopylus revisions, would be ~ 1%, far better than the grossly underestimated 15% error rate assumed for predominantly morphological revisions of braconids as demonstrated in the database of Yu et al (2016).…”

“…As a final illustration of how ineffective morphology is to differentiate braconid species, we will paraphrase a report published by Kang et al (2017). Ilgoo Kang (at that time a new graduate student) and Michael Sharkey (with decades of experience in species-level morphological alpha taxonomy) tested their ability to differentiate the species of Lytopylus before including COI and host data.…”

“…With one exception all are solitary. ACG agathidine genera were treated in the following publications: Sharkey et al 2011a, Meierotto et al (2019a, Kang et al (2017), Janzen et al (1998), Sharkey et al (2016), andSharkey et al (2018). For the Agathidinae NJ tree, see Suppl.…”

A revolutionary protocol to describe understudied hyperdiverse taxa and overcome the taxonomic impediment

“…Recent revisions of ichneumonoids in the subfamilies Agathidinae and Microgastrinae have investigated the utility of the DNA barcoding region of the gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) for species delimitation, paired with morphological and ecological host-use characters (e.g., Fernandez-Triana et al 2014). Kang et al (2017) created initial molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs) for the genus Lytopylus using neighbor joining and maximum likelihood trees, clustering species with boundaries at a sequence divergence of 2%. The MOTUs matched the final species concepts for Lytopylus at 96.6%.…”

Resurrection of Neocardiochiles Szépligeti, 1908 (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Cardiochilinae) with descriptions of five new species from the Neotropical region

“…As shown in the results, 28S interspecific genetic distances between species were much lower than 16S, indicating confirmation of species boundaries based on 28S sequences would be more difficult. 16S sequences exhibited high interspecific genetic distances but mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) barcodes obtained using universally known markers (Folmer et al 1994;Hebert et al 2004) may be more useful to delimit Neocardiochiles species than 16S as confirmed in many other braconid studies (Smith et al 2008;Smith et al 2012;Fernandez-Triana et al 2014;Kang et al 2017;Fernandez-Triana et al 2019;Meierotto et al 2019; Fagan-Jeffries and Austin 2020; Sharkey et al 2021a, b;Slater-Baker et al 2022). Two single gene trees (See Suppl.…”