Metaphycus Mercet

Lahey, Zachary & Stansly, Philip, 2015, An updated list of parasitoid Hymenoptera reared from the Bemisia tabaci species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), Florida Entomologist 98 (2), pp. 456-456 : 456-

Metaphycus Mercet (Chalcidoidea: Encyrtidae )

Metaphycus are primary endoparasitoids of scale insects in the Coccoidea, although a few New World species are known to parasitize whiteflies ( Myartseva 2006b) and jumping plant lice ( Hemiptera : Triozidae ) ( Guerrieri & Noyes 2000). An as yet undescribed Metaphycus sp. was reared from B. tabaci collected in Venezuela by F.D. Bennett, pro- viding the first record of the genus attacking an aleyrodid ( Evans 1993). A recent survey of whitefly natural enemies conducted in Columbia also yielded a Metaphycus sp. ( Bellotti et al. 2005). In the continental United States, there exists at least a single species capable of parasitizing B. tabaci . Recently, specimens were reared from B. tabaci (presumably MEAM1) as part of a survey of the parasitoid Hymenoptera associated with the B. tabaci species complex in southwest Florida (Z. Lahey, unpublished data). In all instances, the adults emerged through a hole chewed in the side of the whitefly and not through the dorsum, which is the typical escape route of whitefly parasitoids. This unusual emer- gence behavior may be explained, in part, by the subsequent rearing of the same species from a mealybug ( Hemiptera : Pseudococcidae ) found inhabiting the same host plant, Pluchea baccharis (Miller) Pruski (As- terales: Asteraceae ). This bi-parental species probably utilizes B. tabaci facultatively and is so infrequently collected from the whitefly that it is not of economic importance.

The species of Metaphycus known to attack whiteflies are all from the New World with those that are described known solely from the Neotropical realm. A key to those species is available in Myartseva (2006b), but many remain undescribed ( Guerrieri & Noyes 2000).