Dyscritobaeus ndokii

Tortorici, Francesco, Caleca, Virgilio, Noort, Simon Van & Masner, Lubomir, 2016, Revision of Afrotropical Dyscritobaeus Perkins, 1910 (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae), Zootaxa 4178 (1), pp. 1-59 : 10

comitans -group

This group includes species without a preoccipital lunula. In the Afrotropical region we recorded two species: Dyscritobaeus . comitans and D. ndokii Tortorici et Caleca sp. nov.

Based on an analysis of the description and figures of Dyscritobaeus indicus ( Mukerjee, 1994) , in contrast to Mineo et al. (2010) and O’Connor & Ashe (2011), both of whom included this species in the orientalis -group, we consider it as belonging to the comitans -group, because of the clear absence of a preoccipital lunula. This species appears to be morphologically very similar to D. comitans , but unfortunately the holotype was not located in the collection of the Department of Zoology , Government Post-Graduate College , Rishikesh or in ZSI centre of Dehradun , India (K. Rajmohana, in litteris); the only difference with D. comitans is the absence of a specillum on T2. This feature was only recently observed and described ( Mineo & Caleca 1992) and we suspect that, as previously happened for D. orientalis in Dodd’s original description (1915), the specillum was overlooked by the author and T2 was described as striate.