Aleiodes marilynae, Shimbori, Eduardo Mitio & Shaw, Scott Richard, 2014

Shimbori, Eduardo Mitio & Shaw, Scott Richard, 2014, Twenty-four new species of Aleiodes Wesmael from the eastern Andes of Ecuador with associated biological information (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Rogadinae), ZooKeys 405, pp. 1-81 : 47-49

Aleiodes marilynae sp. n. Figures 69-73

Description of holotype.

Female (holotype). Body length 6.6 mm; antenna length 7.5 mm; fore wing length 6.6 mm.

Color. Head whitish, except for the ocellar triangle black, and the light yellow face and palp. Mesosoma black but pronotum and propleuron light yellow, and small posterior spot on metapleuron and posterior 1/5 of propodeum whitish; fore legs coxa, trochanter, trochantellus and mostly femur yellow; fore femur with dorso-apical brown stain, reminder fore legs brown; mid legs dark brown, but trochanter and trochantellus white; hind legs black. Metasomal tergite 1 with a black oval spot medially spanning from just behind basal carina to posterior edges of the tergite, remainder of tergite 1 white; tergite 2 black medially, dark region almost quadrate in shape with lateral borders convex at 2/3 posterior, white laterally; tergite 3 mostly white, with basal almost semi-circular black mark; reminder terga white apically, basally black, more or less concealed by the preceding tergite; metasoma ventrally white with a pair of latero-basal spots on each sternite, the spots larger on the second sternite; ovipositor sheaths black, ovipositor yellow.

Head. 50 antennomeres; most flagellomeres roughly 2 × longer than wide, apical flagellomere with small pointed apex; malar space wide, about 2.5 × times basal width of mandible and almost as long as eye height; temple wide, in dorsal view about as long as eye; occipital carina absent; oral space small and circular, diameter about equal to basal width of mandible; clypeus weakly swollen; ocelli very small, ocell–ocular distance 2.2 × diameter of lateral ocellus; head polished (smooth and shining).

Mesosoma. Sculpturing polished (smooth and shining); pronotum shining granular dorsally, otherwise shining coriaceous; mesopleuron sparsely punctuate; notauli very weakly indicated only anteriorly; posterior margin of mesoscutum without carina, smoothly depressing into scutellar sulcus; scutellar sulcus with five incomplete carina posteriorly; mesopleuron central region bare; epicnemial carina absent; longitudinal carina on propodeum absent.

Wings. Fore wing: stigma 3.8 × longer than high; vein r 0.75 × length of 2RS, 0.75 × length of m-cu, and as long as vein RS+Mb; vein 3RSa 0.44 × vein 3RSb, and as long as vein 2M; vein 1CUa about 2 × vein 1cu-a; 1CUb 2 × length of 1CUa; vein 1M almost straight. Hind wing: vein RS curved at middle, marginal cell narrowest point at middle; vein 1M about 2 × longer than vein r-m; vein M+CU 0.9 × vein 1M; vein m-cu absent; vein 2-1A present.

Legs. Tarsal claws simple, not pectinate; hind basitarsus 3 × longer than inner apical spur of hind tibia; hind coxa smooth.

Metasoma. T1-T3 smooth and shining with punctuations on setal “pores”; reminder terga coriaceous; longitudinal carina barely indicated on T1 and absent on T 2; petiole broad, 0.8 × longer than its apical width; ovipositor sheaths about as long as hind tarsomere II.

Male unknown.

Mummy. Length 14.9 mm, mostly pale brown with some dark spots, dorsally at middle of abdomen with faint “X-shape” mark and four withered expansions on each tip of the mark, thorax very strongly compact and abdomen angled upward, very similar to Aleiodes capillosus mummies, glue hole ventrally on thorax, exit hole postero-dorsal, between abdominal and anal prolegs.

Type material.

Type-locality: ECUADOR, Napo Province, Yanayacu Biological Station, YY-44198, S00°35.9', W77°53.4', 2163 m, cloud forest, February 5, 2010.

Type-specimen: Holotype female and mummy, point mounted separately. Top label: "ECUADOR: Napo Province / Yanayacu Biological Station / S00°35.9', W77°53.4' 2163m / CAPEA - NSF-BSI-07-17458 / (hand written) Dec. 2009 / 44198"; back (hand written): "em. 5 Feb 2010". (UWIM)

Biology.

Host plant: Acalypha macrostachya ( Euphorbiaceae ). Host Lepidoptera : Geometridae - common name: "cachos X blanca en la espalda". The parasitoid adult emerged one month after host mummification.

Discussion.

This is the fourth species of the gressitti species-group described. Of the former three, two are from New World, Aleiodes lissos Marsh & Shaw, 2003 and Aleiodes capillosus Townsend, and one from Campbell Island in the South Pacific: Aleiodes gressitti Muesebeck, 1964. This new species most resembles the Neotropical Aleiodes capillosus because of the absence of occipital and epicnemial carina, and also in the mostly black mesosoma and infuscate wings. It differs from Aleiodes capillosus in the whitish head, except for the ocellar triangle being black and the face light yellow, pronotum and propleuron, mid trochanter and trochantellus white, and fore leg coxa, trochanter, trochantellus and mostly femur yellow (while all these parts are black in Aleiodes capillosus ). The malar space is very large, being about as long as the eye height (at most 1/2 in other gressitti-group species). The mummies produced by Aleiodes marilynae sp. n. and Aleiodes capillosus are very similar in the extremely contracted thorax and relatively swollen abdomen, and also in the characteristic acute angle at which the mummy is attached to the substrate.

Etymology.

This species is named in honor of Marilyn Rieden Shaw, wife of the co-author, Scott R. Shaw, in gratitude for her support for his entomological studies over many years.