Wesmaelia Foerster, 1963, 1862

Li, Jun, Zheng, Min-Lin, Yao, Junli & Chen, Jia-Hua, 2019, A new species of Wesmaelia Foerster (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Euphorinae) from China, Zootaxa 4701 (1), pp. 91-96 : 92

Wesmaelia Foerster, 1963

Type species: Wesmaelia petiolata (Wollaston), 1858:18 –28. [= Wesmaelia pendula Forster,1863:225–288 ].

Diagnosis. Head transverse; antenna with 13–31 flagellomeres; maxillary palp 6 segments; labial palp 3 segments; eyes with setae; frons punctate; frontal carina ending near frontal ocellus; occipital carina complete; epistomal suture and malar suture present; malar space short, less than one third height of eye; mandibles overlapping more than half length of mandible; precoxal sulcus and notauli present; propodeum areolate; veins 1-SR+M and 2-M of fore wing present; vein r-m of fore wing absent; vein M+CU1 of fore wing unsclerotized; vein M+CU of hind wing longer than 1-M; vein cu-a of hind wing present; tarsal claws simple; inner hind tibial spur of male subtruncate; first metasomal tergite long, 0.5 × length of metasoma, media width longer than apical width, entirely fused ventrally, dorsope and laterope absent; apex of third metasomal tergite nearly reaching apex of metasoma, covering sternites, without lateral fold; hypopygium of female with short setae apically; ovipositor short ( Chen & van Achterberg 1997).

The genus Wesmaelia is easy to distinguished from its related euphorine genera by long and posteriorly nonbroadening petiole; mesosoma (except propodeum) smooth (at most mesonotum punctate) to polished; vein r-m of fore wing absent; notauli present; slender legs ( Papp 1995).

Distribution. Nearctic, Palearctic, Neotropical and Oriental regions ( Yu et al. 2016).

Biology. The known host of W. petiolata : Nabis alternatus , Nabis americoferus and Nabis capsiformis (P.M. Marsh 1979) . W.lepos is attracted to light ( Belokobylskij 1998).