Pristomerus venda, Rousse & Noort, 2015

Rousse, Pascal & Noort, Simon van, 2015, Revision of the Afrotropical species of Pristomerus (Ichneumonidae: Cremastinae), with descriptions of 31 new species, European Journal of Taxonomy 124, pp. 1-129 : 107-109

Pristomerus venda sp. nov.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:3F426943-BF91-4A98-95B1-7B7778F96B02

Fig. 41

Diagnosis

Moderately small; background colour yellow to testaceous with variable dark brown to black dorsal markings; head sparsely to moderately punctate; inner margins of eyes subparallel; clypeus strongly transverse; malar line short; antenna with 29–30 flagellomeres, penultimate flagellomere subquadrate; mesosoma moderately to densely punctate, pronotum hardly smoother postero-dorsally, and speculum ventrally smoother; propodeum with area superomedia sometimes weakly carinate postero-laterally; female femoral tooth absent; ovipositor moderately long, apically strongly sinuous. Male darker with ocelli, hind femur and femoral tooth strongly enlarged, inner margins of eyes strongly diverging ventrally, and area superomedia slightly more slender.

Differential diagnosis

Rather small and mostly yellowish-orange; differentiated from most other Afrotropical species by the combination of the absence of a femoral tooth in females, the short malar line, the strongly transverse clypeus and the rather long ovipositor. It is closely related to P. moramora and P. kelikely , from which it may be differentiated by the colour and antenna length characters given in the key (see comments).

Type material

Holotype

ZIMBABWE: ♀ “Salisbury [Harare] S. Rhodesia Jan–March–1969 Nat. Museum S.R. coll. B.L. Mitchell, South African Museum ex National Museum Bulawayo 1981, ex Phthorimaea operculella SAM–HYM–P001224” ( SAMC).

Paratypes

ZIMBABWE: 3 ♂♂, 1 ♀, same label data.

Description

Female (2 specimens)

B 6.6–6.8; A 4.0; F 4.6–4.8; POL 0.9; OOL 1.1; CT 2.0; ML 0.4; Fl n-1 1.1; ASM 2.2; OT 1.7–1.8; FFT 0.

COLOUR. Head yellow with face testaceous, and frons, vertex, temples and occiput darker brown, frons sometimes with a mid-longitudinal yellow stripe; mesosoma yellowish-orange with pronotum paler and axillary troughs slightly infuscate; metasoma yellowish-orange with basal tergites variously dark marked; legs yellow to yellowish-orange; wings hyaline, venation brown; ovipositor sheath black.

HEAD. Face moderately and deeply punctate; inner margins of eyes subparallel; clypeus strongly transverse, moderately punctate and centrally smoother; malar line short; frons and vertex sparsely punctate, temple coriaceous; antenna with 29–30 flagellomeres, penultimate flagellomere subquadrate.

MESOSOMA. Mesosoma moderately elongate; entire mesosoma densely punctate, except: pronotum posterodorsally very shallowly punctate, and speculum ventrally smoother; mesopleuron with an oblique striate furrow below speculum; punctures somewhat confluent along notaulus line; notaulus weak; punctation of scutellum distinctly sparser than on mesoscutum; posterior vertical side of scutellum longitudinally striate; area superomedia somewhat elongate, sometimes hardly carinate laterally. Legs. Femoral tooth absent.

METASOMA. Apical half of tergite 1, tergite 2 and base of tergite 3 longitudinally aciculate, following tergites coriaceous; thyridium elliptic and wide, its main axis longitudinal; ovipositor moderately long, its apical half strongly sinuous.

Male (paratypes)

B 6.2–6.6; A 3.8–4.0; F 4.4–4.6; POL 0.5; OOL <0.1. Darker with vertex and occiput centrally blackish, mesosoma dorsally brownish with scutellum yellow and axillary troughs black, hind femur sometimes dark brown, entire tergite 2 and apical half of tergite 1 dark brown; ocelli strongly enlarged, lateral ocellus nearly touching eye; area superomedia slightly more slender; femoral tooth long and acute, followed by a series of denticles; otherwise similar to female.

Host records

Reared from the potato tuber moth, Phthorimaea operculella (Zeller, 1873) ( Lepidoptera : Gelechiidae ).

Distribution

Zimbabwe.

Comments

Pristomerus venda sp. nov. females are likely to be very difficult to differentiate from some P. kelikely and P. moramora . However, we keep it as a separate species because it could be unambiguously associated with males. These males exhibit two of the usual features of sexual dimorphism in Pristomerus spp. which are absent in the males of P. kelikely and P. moramora (ventrally diverging eyes and enlarged ocelli). See P. kelikely for further comments about this species-complex.

Figures

Fig. 41. Pristomerus venda sp. nov. Holotype, ♀. A. Habitus, lateral view. B. Head, mesosoma, dorsal view. C. Head, anterior view. D. Propodeum, dorsal view. E. Mesosoma, lateral view. F. Hind tibia, lateral view (inset: data labels).