Two new reared species of Heteropteron Brullé (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Cardiochilinae) from northwest Costa Rica, with the first definitive host records for the genus

Abstract

Two new Costa Rican species of the braconid parasitoid wasp subfamily Cardiochilinae, Heteropteron kidonoi Dabek & Whitfield and Heteropteron hasegawai Dabek & Whitfield, are described and illustrated from dry forest in the Area de Conservacion Guanacastae, along with data on rearing from their hosts. Heteropteron kidonoi is a solitary endoparasitoid of Stenoma cathosiota (Lepidoptera: Depressariidae) on Roupala montana (Proteaceae), while H. hasegawai is a solitary endoparasitoid of Carthara abrupta (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) on the same host plant, but typically at slightly higher elevation localities. Diagnostic characters are provided to distinguish these two new species from each other, and also from the three previously decsribed species of Heteropteron. Heteropteron kidonoi and H. hasegawai are the first species of Heteropteron to have any host data, and also are the first to be reported in Costa Rica.

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

“…Mercado and Wharton (2003) partly agreed with these synonymies, resurrecting Wesmaelella as a valid genus while retaining Neocardiochiles as a junior synonym of Heteropteron based on wing venation. Papp (2014) and Dabek et al (2020) further validated separation of Heteropteron and Wesmaelella before the current study. Herein, we resurrect Neocardiochiles as a valid genus based on a morphological analysis of previously recorded and new species.…”

“…Prior to the current publication, only seven species were recorded from the three genera, including two recently described species: N. hasegawai (Dabek & Whitfield, 2020), comb. nov. and N. kidonoi (Dabek & Whitfield, 2020), comb. nov..…”

“…nov.. Detailed biological information for these two species was collected by Drs Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs and their team members at the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) (Dabek et al 2020).…”

“…Despite the rarity of the specimens of the three genera in museum collections, their relationships have been frequently discussed and have fluctuated even in recent decades (Dabek et al 2020). All three genera were considered valid by Whitfield and Dangerfield (1997), but Dangerfield et al (1999) later subsumed Neocardiochiles and Wesmaelella into Heteropteron.…”

Orientocardiochiles, a new genus of Cardiochilinae (Hymenoptera, Braconidae), with descriptions of two new species from Malaysia and Vietnam

“…al. 2019 ; Dabek et al 2020 ). The distribution of the members of the subfamily is cosmopolitan, with the highest diversity in tropical and arid regions ( Dangerfield et al 1999 ).…”