Epirhyssa Cresson 1865
Creators: name: Rousse, Pascal
name: Noort, Simon Van
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Ichneumonidae
Epirhyssa

description: Genus Epirhyssa Cresson, 1865
Hierax Tosquinet, 1903: 255.
Rhyssonota Kriechbaumer, 1890: 489.
Sychnostigma Baltazar, 1961: 75.
Diagnosis(updated from Townes 1969 and Gauld 1991)
Small to large insects (fore wing length 6–25 mm), usually orange or yellow interspersed with black maculae; clypeus very small, not subdivided, often with a subapical ridge bearing median and/or lateral weak to strong tubercles; ventral margin of clypeus thin, slightly concave, often with lateral corners produced; mandible not twisted, stout, strongly constricted basally, then weakly tapered, apically bidentate with lower tooth pointed (may appear chisel-like when worn) and upper tooth blunt or chisellike; occipital carina complete to nearly absent, when ventrally present joining hypostomal carina above mandibular base; hypostomal carina strongly raised above mandible base; subocular sulcus absent, but malar area granulate; pronotum long, mid-dorsally with a deep invagination and with thin margin projecting beyond invagination; antero-lateral margin of pronotum broadly rounded in front, its lower corner acute and slightly in-turned; epomia weak to moderately strong, contiguous with and diverging from anterior pronotal margin; mesoscutum with strong transverse rugosities; notauli anteriorly strong and meeting in centre of mesoscutum, defining an anteriorly abruptly rounded median lobe; mesopleuron moderately long, epicnemial carina most often present laterally and reaching to or above lower corner of pronotum, its dorsal end evanescent; mesopleural suture weakly angled centrally; submetapleural carina weak to strong, more or less complete; propodeum of moderate length, without carina dorsally but pleural carina distinct; tarsal claws simple, large; fore wing with areolet open, 2m–cu slightly basal to distinctly apical to rs–m; hind wing with distal abscissa of Cu present, joining Cu&cu–a near or at junction with M; mid trochantellus with a ventral longitudinal ridge; metasoma moderately slender, tergites smooth to finely sculptured; tergite 1 fused with its sternite and without glymma; apical margins of tergites 3–5 hardly to strongly concave; female with sternites 2–4 (but see E. brianfisheri sp. nov.) with an anterior pair of tubercles, and with an apical truncate horn-like process on last tergite, ovipositor stout, laterally compressed, 4– 5x longer than hind tibia; male with metasoma slenderer and subgenital plate elongate, posteriorly rather concave.
Species richness and distribution(Yuet al. 2012)
Epirhyssa is mostly circumtropical with some Far-Eastern species occurring up to Northern Japan; it includes 113 valid species with only six reported from the Afrotropical Region, to which we add here five new species.
description: Published as part of Rousse, Pascal & Noort, Simon Van, 2014, A review of the Afrotropical Rhyssinae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) with the descriptions of five new species, pp. 1-42 in European Journal of Taxonomy 91 (91) on pages 11-12, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2014.91, http://zenodo.org/record/3836824