Praon volucre (Haliday, 1833)

Gadallah, Neveen S., Edmardash, Yusuf A., Mansour, Amany N. & Imam, Ahmed I., 2023, Parasitoid wasps (Ichneumonoidea) collected from faba bean fields, Kharga Oasis, New Valley, Egypt, with new records and the description of a new species, Zootaxa 5389 (5), pp. 501-544 : 510

Praon volucre (Haliday, 1833)

Fig. 4 (A–C)

Material examined: 2♂, Kharga Oasis (New Valley) [25°33’41.9”N 30°37’41.9”E], May, 2022, white pan trap in Vicia faba ; 1♂, same locality and date but [25°14’02.8”N 30°31’32.2”E], yellow pan trap in Vicia faba intercropped with Brassica napus .

Diagnosis. Head and mesosoma dark brown to black (with lighter pronotum), antenna dark brown, legs clear yellow, metasoma with T 1 honey yellow, rest of segments clear yellow with whitish intersegments; pterostigma waxy white; antenna with 18 antennomers (♂), F1 dark brown, with indistinct yellow spot at base; pterostigma 1.3× as long as vein R1 ; vein RS of fore wing normally developed; vein RS +M present, colourless throughout; lateral lobes of mesoscutum densely setose; notauli complete, convergent posteriorly; propodeum smooth, densely setose dorsally; petiole relatively short, 1.2× as long as wide at spiracle;.

Distribution in the MENA: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey.

Comments: Although the key of Rakhshani et al. (2019) is based on females, the characters of the male specimens agree with couplet 17 in their key, excluding the ovipositor characters. It also agrees with Mescheloff & Rosen’s description (1989: 94). Although it has been recorded as an endoparasitoid of a wide range of aphid species affecting several economic crops, especially in this instance it has been recorded as a parasitoid of Aphis fabae attacking V. faba in Iran ( Rakhshani et al. 2007; Nazari et al. 2012), and Lebanon ( Tremblay et al. 1985). This is the first record in Egypt in association with V. faba . It should be noted that in Algeria, it has been recorded as a parasitoid of Acyrthosiphon pisum , Aphis craccivora , and Aphis fabae in association with other crops rather than with V. faba ( Laamari et al. 2012) .

Figures

FIGURE 4. Praon volucre (Haliday, 1833) (♂): A, lateral habitus; B, dorsal habitus; C, fore wing.