Conostigmus nevadensis ( Kieffer, 1906 )

Trietsch, Carolyn, Mikó, István, Ezray, Briana & Deans, Andrew R., 2020, A Taxonomic Revision of Nearctic Conostigmus (Hymenoptera: Ceraphronoidea: Megaspilidae), Zootaxa 4792 (1), pp. 1-155 : 58

Conostigmus nevadensis ( Kieffer, 1906)

Species Comments and History. As with C. integriceps, Kieffer (1906) described this species from a female specimen or specimens collected from San Mateo, California, with the male unknown. Kieffer (1906) described the species as being macropterous with a black body and “Grund und Unterseite des Schaftes, Hüften und Beine lehmgelb (pg. 259). Kieffer (1906) distinguished this species from the female of C. integriceps by the character “Scheitel mit Längsfurche” (pg. 258), which we interpret as the presence of the postocellar carina, and the character ”Stirneindruck bis zur Mitte der Augen reichend” (pg. 258), which could indicate either a long preoccipital furrow, ending inside the ocellar triangle or at the anterior ocellus, or a facial sulcus reaching half the length of the compound eye.

Kieffer later transferred the species to the genus Conostigmus (1909) , then published another description and key (1914). In the key, C. nevadensis is distinguished from other Nearctic female Conostigmus by the character “Scheitel mit einer Längsfurche vom Hinterrande bis zur vorderen ocelli” ( Kieffer, 1914, pg. 178), which appears to confirm that the preoccipital furrow ends at the anterior ocellus.

The location of Kieffer’s type material is unknown, and the characters given in the original description could apply to several different Conostigmus species ( Kieffer, 1906). Hoebeke (1980) recorded a paratype specimen present in the Cornell University Insect Collection (CUIC) in Ithaca, NY, USA, but we were unable to confirm this. Until the female can be studied and more specimens located and examined, including males, we consider Conostigmus nevadensis as a species inquirenda.