J. HYM. RES. Vol. 13(1), 2004, pp. 134-148 The Neotropical Species of Deuterixys Mason (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) James B. Whitfield and M. Teresa Oltra Moscardo (JBW) Department of Entomology, 320 Morrill Hall, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; email:
[email protected]; (MTOM) Instituto Cavanilles de Biodiversidad y Biologia Evolutiva, Universidad de Valencia, Apartado 22085, 46071 -Valencia, Spain; email:
[email protected] Abstract— The neotropical species of the braconid wasp genus Deuterixys Mason are revised for the first time. Seven species are recognized, four of which are new to science: D. colombiana, D. erythrocephala, D. hansoni, and D. tehuantepeca. The remaining three species, D. bennetti Whit-field, D. pacifica Whitfield and D. quercicola Whitfield, were previously known from the Nearctic region but are found to range into the Neotropical. An illustrated identification key is presented for the New World species. Our taxonomic knowledge of parasitoid sented here for the species of Deuterixys wasps in tropical parts of the world, in-Mason in the Neotropical Region began eluding the Neotropical Region, is notori-with absolutely no published information ously incomplete. It is especially so for about any of the species in the area under parasitoids whose hosts are also less well study. understood, for example the microlepi-The genus Deuterixys was erected by doptera as a group. Small caterpillars tend Mason (1981) to house the species previ-to be less conspicuous and more difficult ously assigned by Nixon (1965) to the car-lo identify than larger host insects, and bonarius-group of Apanteles Foerster. By thus relatively few accurate host-parasite 1985, four Palearctic species (Papp, 1983) records are avaitable for them, except in and three Nearctic species (Whitfield, well-surveyed areas. As an example of 1985, 1995) were known, to which Austin this, Whitfield and Mason (1994) de-and Dangerfield (1992) added one Austra-scribed a new subfamily of braconid lian species. All host records so far assem-wasps that appears to attack concealed bled suggest that Deuterixys spp. always microlepidopterans, and this subfamily attack caterpillars in the genus Bucculatrix now is known to contain at least 10-15 (Bucculatricidae), which in turn feed on a species distributed from South America to wide variety of plant families, most nota-the southeastern U. S., some of which are bly on Asteraceae (Whitfield, 1985). The still being discovered every few years wasps pupate within the elongate ribbed (Valerio and Whitfield, 2000; Yamada and cocoons of their hosts, lining the host co-Penteado-Dias, 2002; Valerio and Whit-coon with some silk of their own. The re-field, 2002). Several genera of the subfam-vision we present below contains no host ily Microgastrinae are estimated to contain records from the Neotropical Region, but at least 100 neotropical species, only a the best current guess is that the known handful of which are currently described pattern of specialization on Bucculatrix (Mason, 1981, Whitfield, 1997). Thus it will be found to be true of this area as comes as no surprise that the revision pre-well.
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