Aleiodes dyeri, Shimbori, Eduardo Mitio & Shaw, Scott Richard, 2014

Shimbori, Eduardo Mitio & Shaw, Scott Richard, 2014, Twenty-four new species of Aleiodes Wesmael from the eastern Andes of Ecuador with associated biological information (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Rogadinae), ZooKeys 405, pp. 1-81 : 30-32

Aleiodes dyeri sp. n. Figures 38-40, 122

Description of holotype.

Female (holotype). Body length 6.1 mm; antenna length 6+ mm; fore wing length 5.5 mm.

Color. Head honey yellow, ocellar triangle black; antenna dark brown, scape slightly lighter. Mesosoma honey yellow, some lighter parts on metapleuron and dorsal mesopleuron. Fore leg honey yellow, tarsi slightly darker but 5th tarsomere brown. Mid leg with same pattern of fore leg, but all tarsi brown; coxa, trochanter and trochantellus whitish, coxa with dark lateral stains. Hind leg: coxa mostly dark brown, basal third pale yellow; trochanter and trochantellus white with infuscate stains dorsally; femur black except for narrow basal whitish band; tibia and tarsi dark brown, tibial spurs honey brown. Metasoma black dorsally, ventrally white. Wings hyaline basally, becoming weakly infuscate apically; veins dark brown.

Head. Antenna with 53 antennomeres, flagellomeres roughly 2.0 × as long as wide; malar space short, just slightly longer than basal width of mandible, and 0.3 × eye height; eyes large, in lateral view temple very narrow, in dorsal view eyes 4.7 × longer than temples; occipital carina incomplete, not meeting dorsally and curving toward lateral ocelli, well defined laterally and meeting hypostomal carina; oral space small and circular, maximum width slightly smaller than basal width of mandible; clypeus slightly swollen; ocell–ocular distance about 0.7 × diameter of lateral ocellus; maxillary palp not swollen; head surface sculpturing shining granulate, occiput smooth and shining, frons also smooth with small weak concentric wrinkles; higher face with a small longitudinal ridge and transverse rugosity directed to it; frons excavated with excavation bordered by a weak “W-shaped” carina.

Mesosoma. Sculpturing shining granulate; pronotum foveate; propodeum coarsely shining granular with complete mid-longitudinal carina; notauli shallow and crenulate anteriorly, posteriorly meeting on depressed rugose area; posterior margin of mesoscutum bordered with complete carina; scutellar sulcus with median carina plus three pairs of almost complete lateral carina.

Wings. Fore wing: stigma 3.5 × longer than high; vein r 0.75 × vein 2RS, slightly longer than vein RS+Mb, and 0.7 × vein m-cu; vein 3RSa 0.55 × vein 3RSb, and 0.9 × vein 2M; vein 1CUa 3 × vein 1cu-a; vein 1CUb almost as long as vein 1CUa; vein 1 M evenly slightly curved. Hind wing: vein m-cu distinct, pigmented and apparently tubular, distinctly antefurcal; M+CU 1.5 × 1M; vein 1M short, 0.85 × vein r-m; RS almost parallel to wing margin on basal 1/3 then slightly sinuate; vein M dark brown, well pigmented; vein 2-1A absent.

Legs. Hind tibia with comb of modified setae; tarsal claw pectinate, bristles relatively long and tightly arranged, with a short gap between pectination and claw base; hind basitarsus 3.4 × longer than inner apical spur of hind tibia.

Metasoma. T1, T2 and basal 2/5 of T3 rugose costate, longitudinal carina present along this sculpturing; remainder visible terga granular coriaceous; ovipositor sheaths about as long as tarsomere II; T1 length 1.36 × its apical width.

Male unknown.

Mummy. Length 8.5 mm, reddish brown (similar to a dipteran Brachycera puparium), most setae fell apart, exit hole irregular, located postero-dorsally.

Type material.

Type-locality: ECUADOR, Napo Province, Yanayacu Biological Station, YY-53568, S00°35.9', W77°53.4', 2163 m, cloud forest, February 15, 2011.

Type-specimen: Holotype female and mummy, point mounted separately. Top label: "ECUADOR: Napo Province / Yanayacu Biological Station / S00°35.9', W77°53.4', 2163m / CAPEA - NSF-BSI-07-17458 / (hand written) Dec. 2010 / YY-53568; back (hand written): “15-Feb-2011”. (UWIM)

Biology.

Reared from a species of Holophaea Druce ( Erebidae ) caterpillar (YY-53568), feeding on Diplazium costale var. robustum ( Dryopteridaceae ). Time span, from host mummification until adult emergence, about 5 weeks.

Discussion.

Aleiodes dyeri sp. n. belongs to the seriatus species-group, where it resembles Aleiodes greeneyi , because of the dorsally incomplete occipital carina. It can be distinguished from Aleiodes greeneyi by the honey yellow mesosoma (dorsally black in Aleiodes greeneyi ), the fore wing vein r 1.5 × longer than RS+Mb (1.0 × in Aleiodes greeneyi ), and the hind wing vein r-m longer than 1M (shorter in Aleiodes greeneyi ). Aleiodes dyeri sp. n. is similar to Aleiodes longikeros sp. n. in color patterns. These two species differ in the sculpturing of mesopleuron, being entirely granular in Aleiodes dyeri sp. n. but with a smooth elevated area in Aleiodes longikeros sp. n. The hind wing vein 1M is shorter than r-m in Aleiodes dyeri sp. n., as opposed to being 2.4 × longer in Aleiodes longikeros sp. n., and the shape of fore wing vein 1M is weakly sinuate in Aleiodes dyeri sp. n., as compared with strongly curved in Aleiodes longikeros sp. n. Within the Nearctic species, Aleiodes dyeri sp. n. is more similar to Aleiodes preclarus Marsh & Shaw, 1998, from which it differs in the entire yellowish head but ocellar triangle black (several black spots in Aleiodes preclarus ), wing veins mostly dark brown except fore wing veins M+CU and 1A, and hind wing veins 1M and M+CU proximally yellowish (pterostigma and fore wing vein C+SC+R with yellow spots in Aleiodes preclarus ), and frons smooth (porcate in Aleiodes preclarus ).

Comments.

The antenna tips of the type specimen have a withered aspect, which makes impossible to measure the exact length of the antenna or describe the shape of the apical flagellomere.

Etymology.

This species is named after Dr. Lee Dyer, of the University of Nevada (Reno), the lead investigator of the Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes of Ecuador (CAPEA) project.