Clinocentrus seminiger Szépligeti

Martinez, Juan José, 2009, Two new species of Clinocentrus Haliday (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) from Argentina, with notes on South American species, Journal of Natural History 43 (43 - 44), pp. 2667-2676 : 2674-2675

Clinocentrus seminiger Szépligeti

Clinocentrus seminiger Szépligeti, 1906: 608 (type female, not examined, presumed lost)

Comments

This species was described based on a single female specimen from Mapiri, Bolivia. The description is fairly short and does not mention many characters other than those usually constant in the genus. The colour pattern described for C. seminiger is similar to that described here for C. mamull and C. roigi with a mostly yellowish body and black markings on the lateral lobes of the mesoscutum; it could be distinguished from C. mamull by the darkened dorsal areas of the mesopleuron, and from C. roigi by its uniformly hyaline wings. In the original description, Szépligeti specifically stated that metasomal terga I and II are striate, but the sculpture on tergum III is not mentioned ( Szépligeti 1906). It is possible that C. seminiger is a species with a smooth third metasomal tergum. Additionally, the description of C. seminiger mentions an unusually short antenna for the genus, with only 20 segments. Based on the variation of the number of antennal segments reported for previously described species of Clinocentrus , it is unlikely that C. seminiger is conspecific with any of the other Neotropical species of the genus.

Distribution

The original description only mentions “Mapiri, Bolivia ” as the type locality. Two probable type localities named Mapiri are known in Bolivia, in the departments of La Paz and Pando .

Biology

Unknown.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Sergey Belokobylskij (Museum and Institute of Zoology, Warsaw) for allowing me to study the type specimen described by Enderlein. Grateful thanks are also extended to Jenö Papp and Lázló Ronkay (Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest) for their comments on the type specimens of C. seminiger Szépligeti. Diego Carpintero kindly separated and sorted specimens from light-trap samples. Collecting permits were provided by Administración de Parques Nacionales , Argentina and Dirección Provincial de Fauna , La Pampa, Argentina. Nicholas D’Avella and Daniela De Pasquale provided helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript .