Notiospathius Matthews and Marsh, 1973

Zaldívar-Riverón, Alejandro & Jesús-Bonilla, Vladimir Salvador De, 2010, Redescription of species of the Neotropical parasitoid Notiospathius Mathews et Marsh (Braconidae: Doryctinae) based on their nineteenth and early twentieth century types, Zootaxa 2543, pp. 31-42 : 33

Notiospathius Matthews and Marsh, 1973

Type species: Stenophasmus terminalis Ashmead, 1984 .

Comments. This genus has a Neotropical distribution, with species recorded from Veracruz and Jalisco in central Mexico (Zaldívar-Riverón, unpubl. data) to the north, to northern Argentina to the south (J. J. Martínez, unpub. data). Species of Notiospathius are very similar to those of Hansonorum , and only can be distinguished from species of the latter genus by having the hind coxa with a tuberlce at the base ( Marsh, 2002). A recent phylogenetic study, however, found that species of these two genera appeared intermingled within a single clade together with other doryctine genera with enlarged first metasomal tergite (Zaldívar- Riverón et al., 2008). Therefore, the presence of a tubercle in the hind coxa apparently has been gained and lossed in repeated occasions within the latter clade. Thus, further molecular and morphological studies will confirm whether Hansonorum must be synonymyzed with Notiospathius . Notiospathius is also morphologically similar to Spathius since both have an extremely petiolate, tubular first metasomal tergite, at least four times longer than apical width, with basal sternal plate 0.75 or more length of tergum. However, it can be distinguished from the latter genus by having: 1) fore wing with m-cu vein antefurcal and CU1a vein arising below the middle of first subdiscal cell; 2) hind wing with narrow basal cell, M-CU vein long, and absence of a weak development of the RS vein ( Matthews and Marsh, 1973).

Marsh (2002) provided a key for the species of Notiospathius from Costa Rica, which included 15 new species and three of the species recognized by Matthews and Marsh (1973). The species of Notiospathius redescribed in this study and that are not in Marsh's (2002) key are added at the end of the redescriptions in its couplet 2 except for N. sculpturatus , which could not be included because its holotype lacks the metasoma. This updated key thus only misses four of the currently recognized species of the genus, three of which we could not examine their holotypes, N. caudatus (Szépligeti, 1902) , N. colombianus (Enderlein, 1912) , and N. eleutherae (Ashmead, 1892) .