Pholetesor bedelliae (Viereck, 1911)

Material examined.

Canada: New Brunswick: Fredericton, 45.963487, -66.6442, 9.vii.1970, leg. C. M. Yoshimoto, CNCHYM 03145 [paratype] ; Germany: Bavaria: Bayreuth, Gemein, Trebgast, 49.989, 11.603, 348 m, Malaise trap, 11.vii.2019, leg. J. Müller, ZSM-HYM-42385-C09 ; Volkach, Stammheim am Main, 49.92, 10.192, 215 m, Malaise trap, 16.vii.2019, leg. J. Müller, ZSM-HYM-42380-E08 .

Geographical distribution.

AUS, NEA, NEO, PAL.

AUS: Hawaiian Islands; NEA: Canada (AB, BC, MB, NB, NS, ON, QC, SK), USA (AK, AZ, AR, CA, CT, DC, FL, IL, IA, KA, LA, MO, NJ, NY, OR, VA); NEO: Bermuda, Peru; PAL: Finland, Germany*.

Molecular data.

BIN: BOLD:AAA9172.

Host information.

Types reared from Bedellia sp. At least 21 host species within seven families of Lepidoptera have been recorded as hosts of this wasp species (Yu et al. 2016), but many may be incorrect and thus are not cited here.

Notes.

We compared our specimens to a paratype and many other Nearctic specimens stored at the CNC (such as CNCHYM 03145), as well as the comprehensive description in Whitfield (2006). Morphologically, this species is somewhat similar to Pholetesor maritimus (Wilkinson, 1941), which is also recorded from Europe (Fernandez-Triana et al. 2020). However, the characters used by Nixon (1973) do not work in all cases to separate these species, as some specimens of Pholetesor bedelliae have coarse/strong sculpture (of T1, T2, and anteromesoscutum) that approaches or is very similar to the sculpture described for P. maritimus . DNA barcodes unequivocally show that the two species are far apart and that the German specimens clearly cluster with many specimens identified by us of P. bedelliae from Canada and USA. All these sequences are separated by ~ 5% p-distance from the sequences of P. maritimus currently available in BOLD (MRS_JFT0464, MRS_JFT0471). Many hosts associated with P. bedelliae in the historical literature are probably incorrect, due to problems identifying both the wasp and caterpillar species (e.g., see Whitfield 2006); solving this problem is beyond the scope of this paper. This species is illustrated in Fig. 42.