PKOC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 104(3). 2002. pp. .'S89-601 DESCRIPTION OF AEGESEVCOELA BUFFINGTON, NEW NAME, WITH NOTES ON THE STATUS OF GRONOTOMA FORSTER (HYMENOPTERA: FIGITIDAE: EUCOILINAE) MATTHIiW L. BUFFINGTON Department of Entomology. Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, U.S.A.; current address: Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, U.S.A. (e-mail:
[email protected]) Abstract. — Aegeseucoela Buffington, a replacement name for Moneucoela Dalla Torre and Kieffer 1910, is described. Aei>eseucoela contains two previously described species, Aegeseucoela flavotiucta (Kieffer), n. comb., and A. grenadensis (Ashmead), n. comb., both of which are redescribed. The status of Gronotoma Forster is discussed, and the synonymy of Eucoilidea Ashmead with Gronotoma is formally documented. Gronotoma nigricornata Buffington, new name, is proposed to replace Eucoilidea nigricornis Kieffer 1908. Thirty-two new combinations in Gronotoma are given, and a checklist of the world species of Gronotoma is provided. Species in both Aegeseucoela and Gronotoma are common parasitoids of Agromyzidae (Diptera). Aegeseucoela is restricted to the New World tropics and subtropics, and Gronotoma is common in the Afrotropics, as well as Asia, Australia, and the Palearctic and Nearctic regions. Key Words: Aegeseucoela, Gronotonui, Eucoilinae, Figitidae. Agromyzidae, Cynipoidea Eucoiline wasps are endoparasitoids of cyclorrhaphous Diptera inhabiting a variety of habitats. These wasps are generally shiny black to dark reddish brown and range in size from 0.5 mm to 5 mm. The Eucoilinae contain 82 genera and nearly 1000 species, and are by far the most diverse of all figitid subfamilies (Ronquist 1999). Only two ma-jor bodies of work have attempted to clas-sify all of the eucoiline genera (Dalla Torre and Kieffer 1910, Weld 1952), and for the most part, eucoiline classification schemes have resulted in a great deal of chaos (dis-cussed in Nordlander 1982b). Presently available identification keys to eucoiline genera (Dalla Torre and Kieffer 1910, Weld 1952) are largely useless due to the reliance on a few key features, none of which are very dependable. Nordlander (1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982a, 1982b) was the first to treat eucoi-line classification from a phylogenetic point of view. Through these works, clear generic and species level definitions were provided for the first time for a number of Palearctic and cosmopolitan taxa. Nordlander ( 1982b) summarized his findings by proposing in-formal genus groups defined by explicit morphological criteria, a first step towards a more logical and natural classification scheme. An investigation into the phylogenetics and classification of one of these informal genus groups, the Gronotoma group (Buf-fington, unpublished data), resulted in the identification of a clade of eucoiline wasps of questionable taxonomic placement. Two previously described species were found to belong in this clade, described here as Ae-geseucoela, and both species are rede-
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