Reikosiella (Hirticauda) andriescui Fusu, 2013, sp. nov.
Creators: name: Fusu, Lucian
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2013
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Eupelmidae
Reikosiella
Reikosiella andriescui

description: 1. Reikosiella (Hirticauda) andriescui sp. nov.
(Figs 2, 7, 31)
SPECIMENS EXAMINED. Holotype Ƥ: [SPAIN: CANARY ISLANDS] Tenerife/ Monte de Tagana-/ na 15.V.1922; MNCN_Ent/ N o Cat. 82435 (MNCN) [card mounted by entire ventral side so that lower face is difficult to examine, uncontorted, entire].
ETYMOLOGY. Named in honor of Professor Ionel Andriescu in recognition of his pioneering work on Romanian Chalcidoidea.
DESCRIPTION. FEMALE. Holotype Ƥ: length 3 mm. Dark-bodied. Head (Fig. 2) dark with bright multicolored metallic lustres—occiput dark with faint golden-green lustre, frontovertex mostly golden-green except ocellar triangle and area below anterior ocellus purple, with some irregular blue and purple spots above scrobal depression, scrobal depression golden-green with dark blue above toruli, malar region, gena and temples dark purple with a golden-green spot along lower orbit; maxillary and labial palpi pale brownish. Antenna darkbrown with a faint metallic lustre, scape and pedicel lighter apically and scape darker dorsally. Mesosoma (Fig. 7) primarily dark brown with pronotum having faint dark purple and bluish-green lustres under some angles of light; mesoscutum with faint bluish, green or golden reflections depending on viewing angle, and with a purple median line that is especially bright within median depressed area; tegula dark brown; scutellum dark purple dorsally and bright golden-green on posteriorly sloping surface, axillae dark yellowish-brown with faint purple lustre, only slightly contrasting with scutellum; dorsellum mostly brown, propodeum with callar regions dark bluish-green and elsewhere with some brighter golden, green and purple lustres under some angles of light; prepectus and extreme anterior edge of acropleuron light yellowish-brown, acropleuron with faint golden, green and purple lustres under some angles of light; mesepisternum dark brown. Fore wing with brown venation except median part of submarginal vein lighter; wing disc unevenly infuscate starting from parastigma and at proximal angle of basal and costal cells, with three darker areas—one behind parastigma and basal quarter of marginal vein extending to hind margin of wing, one behind stigmal vein and apical third of marginal vein also extending to hind margin of wing, and one distad stigmal vein but by far not reaching hind margin of wing or wing apex (Fig. 7). Legs brown to dark brown with knees, anterior surface of fore femur and extreme base and ventral surface of mid femur paler. Metasoma with Mt1 brownish, Mt2 brown with a paler hind margin, Mt3 white but concealed under Mt2, Mt4–Mt8 dark brown with faint multicolored metallic lustres under some angles of light. Ovipositor sheath dark brown except for a narrow, inconspicuous subapical pale ring (Fig. 7).
Head with frontovertex conspicuously coriaceous-granular passing to imbricate-alutaceous toward occipital area and upper limit of scrobal depression; lower face and gena alutaceous with area near malar sulcus smoother; scrobal depression shallow and wide, subrectangular, imperceptibly merging into frons, in lateral view with slightly angular lower parascrobal region, coriaceous-granular with strong, shiny and smooth granule (Fig. 2); setae on frontovertex and along internal eye margin presumably conspicuous, black and erect (glued to head capsule in holotype), those on lower face and lower parascrobal region long and white. Frontovertex 0.4× head width, with ocelli arranged in a right triangle. Eye inconspicuously microsetose with setae shorter than an ommatidium diameter. Toruli with upper margin in line with lower orbit. Scape in dorsal view strongly curved, in outer view about 4.3× as long as wide, with an extremely narrow ventral lamina apically, and wider in basal third with dorsal margin straight and ventral margin sinuously narrowed toward apex; in outer view pedicel 2.1× as long as wide, F1 1.7× as long as wide, F2 nearly 4× as long as wide, and following segments gradually shortened and broadened toward clava but all longer than wide; clava 2.8× as long as wide, slightly longer than combined length of apical two funiculars; pedicel plus flagellum 1.9× HW. Relative measurements: HW 52, FV 21, HL 28, HH 39, EL 27, EW 22, MS 13, LOL 4, OOL 4.5, POL 7, MPOD 4, SL 34, SW 8.
Pronotum and mesoscutum with long, sparse setae; pronotum divided medially, with imbricate-alutaceous sculpture and a line of about 10 long erect setae along posterior margin; mesoscutum with convex median lobe and median depressed area imbricate-coriaceous, lateral lobe sharply carinate in posterior quarter and finely coriaceous dorsally (mesh size very small) to imbricate-alutaceous on sides. Axillae obliquely imbricate-alutaceous with narrow cells, appearing strigose, with anterior edge in same plane as scutellum base, convexly sloping posteriorly; scutellum convex, dorsally circularly imbricate-alutaceous except becoming coriaceous posteriorly, with several dark long setae. Dorsellum with a broadly rounded median lobe covering apex of scutellum. Propodeum without plical depression, with plical region narrow, with anterior V-shaped and posterior Λ-shaped carinae nearly touching medially and with a very short median carina; callar region slightly convex with long setae in outer half, and with moderately large spiracle smaller than a posterior ocellus and separated from anterior margin by distance equal to its own largest diameter. Acropleuron bare, alutaceous anteriorly and nearly polished posteriorly; mesepisternum with long, white and erect setae. Hind coxa alutaceous to coriaceous, with dense white setae anteriorly and along ventral margin of outer surface and with a few setae along dorsal edge. Fore wing 2.9× as long as wide; basal cell uniformly, sparsely setose; costal cell setose along anterior margin and distally; parastigma with denser and darker setae than rest of disc, which is evenly setose with long, brownish setae; venation with long uncus and stigma not enlarged (Fig. 31), cc: mv: stv: pmv: uncus: u-pmv = 2.8: 3.7: 1: 1.4: 0.3: 0.3. Relative measurements: MSL 95, MSCL 43, MSCW 40, SCL 21, SCW 13, AXW 11, AXL 13, FWL 145, FWW 49, cc 42, mv 56, stv 15, pmv 21, uncus 4.5, u-pmv 5, HWL 124, HWW 34, MT 64, HT 64.
Metasoma with terga sparsely setose, smooth to finely alutaceous; Mt7 partially covering Mt8, with a short dorsal surface anterior to emargination surrounding posteriorly facing anal sclerite; Mt2 to Mt7 with nearly straight posterior margin. Ovipositor 1.4× hind tibia length. Relative measurements: MTL 104, MTW 45, OL 91.
MALE. Unknown.
RECOGNITION. The female of Reikosiella andriescui closely resembles that of R. rostrata because of similar antennal structures, fore wing infuscation patterns and body color patterns. However, the female of R. andriescui is much more melanic with conspicuous bands on the fore wing, the metallic lustre on the mesosoma reduced essentially to a narrow, median purple line on the mesoscutum, the legs including tarsi mostly dark brown, and the antenna entirely brown. In R. rostrata, the fore wings have fuzzy infuscated areas, the mesosoma is widely bluishgreen with yellowish pleurae and the median depressed area of the mesoscutum extensively bluish-violet, at least the tarsi and apices of the mid and hind tibiae yellow and in most specimens the scape yellow. Females of the two species differ also in the length of the ovipositor sheath, which is longer in R. andriescui, and in sculpture of the scrobal depression and frontovertex. These are mostly smooth and mirror-like in R. rostrata, whereas in R. andriescui the frontovertex is conspicuously coriaceous-granular, though becoming imbricate-alutaceous toward the occipital area and upper limit of the scrobal depression, the latter with coriaceous-granular sculpture made of strong, shiny and smooth granule.
BIOLOGY. Unknown.
DISTRIBUTION. Canary Islands (Tenerife). The species seems to be very rare as I did not find a single specimen in the samples collected during a large biodiversity survey of the invertebrate species of La Palma (Domingo-Quero et al. 2003).
description: Published as part of Fusu, Lucian, 2013, A revision of the Palaearctic species of Reikosiella (Hirticauda) (Hymenoptera, Eupelmidae), pp. 1-34 in Zootaxa 3636 (1) on pages 6-9, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3636.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/283565