Tamarixia Mercet, 1924

Yefremova, Zoya, Gonzalez-Santarosa, Graciela, Lomeli-Flores, J. Refugio & Bautista-Martinez, Nestor, 2014, A new species of Tamarixia Mercet (Hymenoptera, Eulophidae), parasitoid of Trioza aguacate Hollis & Martin (Hemiptera, Triozidae) in Mexico, ZooKeys 368, pp. 23-35 : 25-26

Genus Tamarixia Mercet, 1924

Type species.

Tamarixia bicolor Mercet, 1924: 57 (original designation).

Diagnosis.

Tamarixia can be distinguished by the following combination of features: fore wing with a single seta on the dorsal surface of the submarginal vein, propodeum without a Y-shaped carina; plicae and paraspiracular carinae absent, midlobe of mesoscutum with 2 pairs of long adnotaular setae (three pairs setae in Tamarixia dahlsteni Zuparko, 2011) and additional 2 pairs of short setae in the upper part in a horizontal row and 1 seta near notauli in Tamarixia aguacatensis sp. n. (Fig. 7). The anterior margin of the female hypopygium is almost straight, and the males have exceptionally long genitalia. An additional diagnostic character is that the toruli are closer to eye margin than to each other. Species are generally shiny black, but may have yellow markings on the gaster and/or head. The gaster of the female subcircular to ovate; one seta of each cercus 1.5 times or more the length of the next longest seta.

Biology.

Species of Tamarixia are primary ectoparasitoids of psyllids ( Graham 1987, 1991; Bouček 1988a, 1988b; LaSalle 1994; Brothers and Moran 1969; Moran et al. 1969; Noyes 2013) and parasitize immature stages of Trioza ( Hemiptera , Psyllidae ) ( Mead 1994).

Distribution.

Tamarixia is a cosmopolitan genus, with about 50 described species ( Noyes 2013), most of them in Palearctic. Zuparko et al. (2011) listed 47 species of Tamarixia in the world but the authors missed 3 species: Tamarixia krascheninnikovi (Kostjukov, 1990), Tamarixia fulvus Yefremova & Yegorenkova, 2009 and Tamarixia psyllae Yefremova & Yegorenkova, 2009 ( Kostjukov 1990; Yefremova and Yegorenkova 2009).

Identification.

Keys to Tamarixia species are available for Europe ( Graham 1991), the European part of Russia and the Far East of Russia ( Kostjukov 1978; Kostjukov 1995, 2000), India ( Narendran 2007), North America ( Burks 1943, two species as part of Tetrastichus ), and Yemen ( Yefremova and Yegorenkova 2009).

Key to Mexican species of Tamarixia

(Females)

(Males)