Sceliotrachelinae Brues, 1910

van Noort, Simon, Lahey, Zachary, Talamas, Elijah J., Austin, Andrew D., Masner, Lubomir, Polaszek, Andrew & Johnson, Norman F., 2021, Review of Afrotropical sceliotracheline parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera, Platygastridae), Journal of Hymenoptera Research 87, pp. 115-222 : 115

Sceliotrachelinae Brues

Sceliotrachelinae Brues, 1908: 3, 12 (original description, keyed); Kozlov 1970: 222 (description); Fabritius 1974: 293 (description); Muesebeck 1979: 1174 (catalogue of species of U.S. and Canada); Sarazin 1986: 967 (primary type material in Canadian National Collection of Insects); Masner and Huggert 1989: 11 (ground plan characters); Buhl 1999: 10 (checklist of species of Denmark); Loiácono and Margaría 2002: 555 (catalogue of Brazilian species); Rajmohana 2006: 133 (description, keyed); Ghahari and Buhl 2011: 331 (species of Iran); Rajmohana 2014: 6 (keyed); Asadi-Farfar et al. 2020: 125 (new species records of Iran).

Amitini Szabó, 1959: 390 (original description. Synonymized by Masner 1964).

Sceliotrachelini Brues, 1908: Masner 1964: 9 (change to tribal status, systematic position, diagnosis).

Diagnosis.

The subfamily is poorly defined with no confirmed synapomorphic characters uniting the currently included taxa. Many, but not all, sceliotracheline genera possess foamy structures, which, among platygastroids, are limited to Platygastridae ( Lahey et al. 2019b; Chen et al. 2021). The following characters can be loosely used for a broad definition: the form of the female antennal clava, which is often abrupt, massive and usually obviously 3- or 4-merous; a very stout habitus, similar to the form present in the subfamily Telenominae , with the metasoma not laterally carinated (there is no impressed submarginal ridge as found in Scelioninae and Teleasinae ), at most a sharp lateral edge. There is a very short (sometimes almost absent) to a long, well developed (especially in species with 10 antennomeres) apically knobbed submarginal vein in Fidiobia (Ovidiu Popovici pers. comm.), except in the brachypterous F. pronotata Szabó, and a longer submarginal vein in Allotropa that has a spectral knob. In Platygastoides Dodd, at least in the type of the genus, P. mirabilis , the submarginal vein is knobbed apically, but far more spectral. Sometimes there is a spectral submarginal vein present in Amitus , but this is never knobbed apically. Fore wing venation is absent in Isolia and Sceliotrachelus , except for S. karooensis sp. nov., which has a spectral submarginal vein. The Australian Platygastoides combines some characters of Fidiobia , Plutomerus and Isolia .