Alaptus Westwood 1839
Creators: name: Huber, John
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2009
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Mymaridae
Alaptus

description: <i>Alaptus</i> group of genera The <i>Alaptus</i> -group of genera is distinguished by at least one apomorphy: in both sexes the anterior scutellum is separated from the posterior scutellum by a transverse suture that sometimes divides the scutellum into two completely separate sclerites (Figs 3, 8, 14). Huber and Lin (1999) and Lin et al. (2007) give additional diagnostic features. Taking into consideration the changes in classification proposed here, the <i>Alaptus</i> group now contains the following five genera: <i>Alaptus</i>, <i>Dicopomorpha</i>, <i>Dicopus</i>, <i>Kikiki</i> <i>,</i> and <i>Mimalaptus</i>. <i>Mimalaptus</i>, illustrated here by <i>M. victoria</i> (Girault) (Figs 7–11) [on a slide with another mymarid species (Fig. 7)], resembles <i>Dicopomorpha</i> in having a 7-segmented (rarely 6-segmented) funicle in females (Figs 9, 11), but differs by the posterior scutellum being clearly divided medially by a longitudinal suture (Fig. 8) and the posterior margin of the fore wing having a distinct lobe behind the venation (Fig. 10). <i>Mimalaptus</i> is currently known only from the Australian region (Noyes and Valentine 1989, Lin et al. 2007) but I have seen specimens from the several countries in the Oriental region and Japan (Honshu) in the Palearctic region. Once the fauna is better known it may be better to treat <i>Mimalaptus</i> as a subgenus of <i>Dicopomorpha</i> because the structure of the posterior scutellum appears to be the only unequivocal difference that separates it from <i>Dicopomorpha</i>. I have also seen a fossil specimen from Baltic amber (together with a second, larger, piece of amber in box G 3.910 Hymenoptera # BST03124, Geological- Palaeontological Institute and Museum, Göttingen, Germany), indicating that it is or was much more widespread. <i>Dicopus</i> is also a worldwide genus that resembles <i>Dicopomorpha</i> in having a 7-segmented funicle in females, but is distinguished from it and <i>Mimalaptus</i> by an extremely narrow fore wing and ventrally directed mandibles that do not cross over when closed. Several workers had independently recognized that <i>Kubja</i> is probably a synonym of <i>Dicopus</i> but this was never published. The wings (Fig. 19), mandibles (Figs 13, 15), female antenna (Fig. 16), male antenna (Fig. 17), and general body shape and structure of the mesosoma (Figs 12, 14, 15) of the type specimens (2 females and 1 male, Fig. 18) of <i>Kubja longipes</i> Subba Rao are the same as for species of <i>Dicopus</i> so the synonymy is formalized here as <i>Kubja</i>, syn. n. and the type species is transferred to <i>Dicopus</i> as <i>Dicopus longipes</i> (Subba Rao), comb. n. While progress has been made in working out generic limits within the <i>Alaptus</i> group of genera, whose members are small even for Mymaridae, there is still uncertainty about generic limits. Further study of as many undescribed species, of <i>Dicopomorpha</i> and <i>Alaptus</i> in particular, is needed to determine if the current concepts and generic limits represent monophyletic lineages worthy of generic status.
description: Published as part of <i>Huber, John, 2009, The genus Dicopomorpha (Hymenoptera, Mymaridae) in Africa and a key to Alaptus-group genera, pp. 233-244 in ZooKeys 20 (20)</i> on pages 234-235, DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.20.116, http://zenodo.org/record/576514
description: {"references": ["Huber JT and Lin NQ (1999) World review of the Camptoptera group of genera (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae). Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Ontario 130: 21 - 65.", "Lin NQ, Huber JT, La Salle J (2007) The Australian genera of Mymaridae Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea). Zootaxa 1596. 1 - 111"]}