Twenty-four new species of Aleiodes Wesmael from the eastern Andes of Ecuador with associated biological information (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Rogadinae)

Abstract

Aleiodes Wesmael is the most diverse rogadine genus worldwide, with specialized koinobiont endoparasitic development in Lepidoptera caterpillars resulting in mummification of the host remains. This paper focuses on describing new Aleiodes species from the Yanayacu Biological Station, with special interest in those with biological information. We describe 24 new species (Aleiodes albidactyl sp. n., Aleiodes albigena sp. n., Aleiodes albiviria sp. n., Aleiodes bimaculatus sp. n., Aleiodes cacuangoi sp. n., Aleiodes colberti sp. n., Aleiodes delicatus sp. n., Aleiodes dyeri sp. n., Aleiodes elleni sp. n., Aleiodes falloni sp. n., Aleiodes frosti sp. n., Aleiodes kingmani sp. n., Aleiodes longikeros sp. n., Aleiodes luteosicarius sp. n., Aleiodes marilynae sp. n., Aleiodes mirandae sp. n., Aleiodes napo sp. n., Aleiodes nubicola sp. n., Aleiodes onyx sp. n., Aleiodes shakirae sp. n., Aleiodes stewarti sp. n., Aleiodes townsendi sp. n., Aleiodes tzantza sp. n., and Aleiodes yanayacu sp. n.) from Napo Province in Ecuador, 16 of which were reared from host caterpillars. With these results 89 species of Neotropical Aleiodes are now known, with 41 of them having host records. The most commonly reared species were in the circumscriptus/gastritor species-group, and mostly associated with Geometridae hosts (six of ten species). Three species of seriatus species-group, in contrast, were each reared from a different family. One of these species (i.e. A. frosti sp. n.), reared from Notodontidae, cuts a posterior radial opening in the mummy for emergence, a unique behavior in Aleiodes, recorded here for the first time. A. luteosicarius sp. n. is the first described species from Ecuador in the pallidator species-group. Differing from previously described pallidator species, which attack only Lymantriinae larvae, A. luteosicarius sp. n. attacks several species of Arctiinae larvae, being both subfamilies within Erebidae with densely setose caterpillars. We also describe new species of the gressitti and pulchripes species-groups.

A new species of Aleiodes (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Rogadinae) from Brazil, with biological notes

“…In the keys to species from Eastern Ecuadorian Andes (townSend & Shaw, 2009 ;Shimbori & Shaw, 2014), which contains all other previously described Neotropical species in circumscriptus/gastritor species-group, the new species will run to Aleiodes speciosus Townsend, 2009. The new species can be distinguished from A. speciosus mainly by the color pattern.…”

“…In the Neotropical region there are 89 described species of Aleiodes, 41 of them with host records (Fortier, 2009;townSend & Shaw, 2009;Shimbori & Shaw, 2014). The first division of Aleiodes into species-groups accounts for fifteen different groups.…”

A revision of the New World species of theAleiodes compressorspecies group (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Rogadinae)

“…Aleiodes Wesmael (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Rogadinae) is the most common and species rich rogadine genus worldwide. There are 212 species described to the New World, of which 143 occur in the Nearctic and 89 in the Neotropical Region (Yu et al 2012; Shimbori and Shaw 2014). The larger number of species in Nearctic Region is most likely due to more research effort in this region, rather than any biological process (Quicke 2012).…”

Four New Species of Dragon's Blood Croton (Euphorbiaceae) from South America

“…The tropical Andes are a well known hotspot for biodiversity (Myers et al 2000), however knowledge of their biodiversity seems far from complete, with many new species, and even genera, being described in recent years in different lineages of organisms (e.g. Kaczmarek et al 2014;Michelangeli et al 2014;Shimbori and Shaw 2014;Lagomarsino and Santamaría-Aguilar 2016;Brito et al 2017;Wurdack and Farfan-Rios 2017), including many new Croton species (Murillo 1999;Smith 2006;Riina and Berry 2010;Riina et al 2007Riina et al , 2014Riina et al , 2015. This work represents one more contribution to this increasing list of taxonomic novelties for this genus in the Andes and adjacent areas, and also supports the claim about the importance of herbarium collections in the discovery of plant diversity (Bebber et al 2010).…”