Thripobius Ferrière, 1938

Triapitsyn, Serguei V., 2005, Revision of Ceranisus and the related thrips-attacking entedonine genera (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) of the world, African Invertebrates 46, pp. 261-315 : 307

Genus Thripobius Ferrière, 1938

Thripobius Ferrière, 1938: 146 . Type species: Thripobius hirticornis Ferrière, 1938 , by monotypy.

Thripobius Ferrière : Boucek 1988: 734; Schauff 1991: 70, 71; Loomans & van Lenteren 1995: 132–137, 197.

Diagnosis: Body size small to moderately small (0.5–1.0 mm); head and mesosoma smooth or weakly sculptured; complete and straight suture present across vertex just behind posterior ocelli; malar sulcus split ventrally (Y-shaped); antennal flagellum (in both sexes) with 2 funicle segments (usually appressed to each other) and a 3-segmented clava with an apical spicula (division between second and third claval segments often indistinct), flagellar segments with long sensilla and setae; notauli indistinct; midlobe of mesoscutum usually with 1 pair of setae but asetose in the type species of the genus; anterior margin of scutellum almost straight or slightly sinuate; forewing with bare area at posterior margin behind base of marginal vein, demarcated anteriorly by a sinuate line of setae; petiole wider than long. Other distinguishing features indicated at http:// cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/ Eulophidae /index.html ( Burks 2003): “Frontal grooves extending to top of eye, sometimes ending in vertex[al] suture… Flagellum with elongate (type 3) peg sensilla”. Because I could not see the frontal grooves in all the species of this genus except for T. javae (Girault) (due to the poor condition of the specimens), I don’t use this character in the key to separate Thripobius from Ceranisus , in which the frontal grooves reach the eye at level of the anterior ocellus.

Hosts: Larval parasitoids of various Panchaetothripinae (Terebrantia: Thripidae ).

Comments: In the future, the status of Thripobius may need to be downgraded to a species group within Ceranisus (in that case perhaps informally called as the C. javae species group), because most of the morphological characters used by various authors for its definition can also be found in some species of Ceranisus . For instance, the female clava is 3-segmented in C. russelli and most of its specimens have just one pair of setae on the midlobe of mesoscutum. At least one species of Ceranisus also has a split malar sulcus (Triapitsyn & Morse 2005); that was one of the main distinguishing features used by Schauff (1991) in the definition of Thripobius . The forewing in Thripobius spp. is very similar to that in the menes species group of Ceranisus . Because of the lack of good quality specimens of Thripobius species for study (particularly of T. hirticornis , the type species of the genus) and unavailability of molecular data on either Thripobius and Ceranisus , this problem remains unsolved for the time being.