Microplitis naenia Nixon, 1970

Hoecherl, Amelie, Shaw, Mark R., Boudreault, Caroline, Rabl, Dominik, Haszprunar, Gerhard, Raupach, Michael J., Schmidt, Stefan, Baranov, Viktor & Fernandez-Triana, Jose, 2024, Scratching the tip of the iceberg: integrative taxonomy reveals 30 new species records of Microgastrinae (Braconidae) parasitoid wasps for Germany, including new Holarctic distributions, ZooKeys 1188, pp. 305-386 : 305

Microplitis naenia Nixon, 1970

Material examined.

Czech Republic: South Moravia: Obora Soutok, Lanžhot, 48.69, 16.945, 165 m, ex. Orthosia cruda , 14.v.2013, leg. P. Drozd, BC- ZSM-HYM-23873-E06 ; Germany: Bavaria: Grettstadt , 49.963, 10.372, 248 m, canopy fogging, 28.v.2021, leg. B. Leroy, ZSM-HYM-42393-D05; Iphofen, 49.646, 10.315, 355 m, canopy fogging, 2.v.2019, leg. B. Leroy, ZSM-HYM-33158-A10; Prichsenstadt, 49.855, 10.304, 258 m, canopy fogging, 1.v.2019, leg. B. Leroy, ZSM-HYM-33158-A09; Schonungen, 50.077, 10.429, 359 m, canopy fogging, 23.v.2019, leg. B. Leroy, ZSM-HYM-33158-E05; ZSM-HYM-33158-E06; Wiesentheid, 49.803, 10.277, 216 m, canopy fogging, 1.v.2019, leg. B. Leroy, ZSM-HYM-33158-B02; ZSM-HYM-33158-B03 ; Thüringen: Neubrunn , 50.511, 10.457, 448 m, canopy fogging, 29.v.2021, leg. D. Rabl, ZSM-HYM-42447-D08 .

Geographical distribution.

PAL.

PAL- Czech Republic*, Germany*, Hungary, Russia (C, NW), Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom.

Molecular data.

BINs: BOLD:ABV9098, BOLD:AEK2564.

Host information.

Host of type unknown; also Noctuidae : Cosmia trapezina (Linnaeus, 1758), Conistra vaccinii (Linnaeus, 1761), Eupsilia transversa (Hufnagel, 1766), Orthosia cruda (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775), Orthosia cerasi (Fabricius, 1775), Rileyiana fovea (Treitschke, 1825).

Notes.

The morphology of our material (see Fig. 41 ) matches the species described in Nixon (1970), as well as the keys in Papp (1984b), Tobias (1986), and Kotenko (2007). There are two BINs which we associate with this species. Our specimens show some intraspecific morphological variability, which matches what Nixon mentioned in the original description of the species. Specimens of both barcoding clusters parasitise the same host, Orthosia cruda , from which two of Nixon’s paratypes were reared. One specimen from BOLD:ABV9098 (BC- ZSM-HYM-23873-E06) was reared from this species, and we have metabarcoding data that strongly indicates that members of BOLD:AEK2564 parasitise the same host species. Metabarcoding of 22 individual caterpillars of O. cruda resulted in more than 100 reads per caterpillar of sequences that match this BIN. With this information, we consider our specimens of both barcoding clusters to represent members of M. naenia . BIN BOLD:ABV9098 and BOLD:AEK2564 are separated by 1.71% p-distance and the species has an intraspecific variability of 2.63% (p-distance). The hosts associated with this wasp species were reported either by Nixon (1970), as part of the original description, or by Capek (1972) and Capek et al. (1982); we consider both to be reliable because some of the material reported by Nixon (1970) came from Capek. This species is illustrated in Fig. 41 .

Figures

Figure 41. Microplitis naenia Nixon, 1970, female (ZSM-HYM- 42447 - D 08) A lateral view B meso- and metasoma C wing. Length of the specimen: 3.5 mm.