Rhimphoctona melanura (Holmgren, 1860)

Verheyde, Fons, Hoekstra, Paul, Libert, Pierre-Nicolas, Meijer, Hilco, Ketelaere, Augustijn De, Vandaudenard, Thibaud, Belgers, Dick & Brosens, Edwin, 1880, Two hundred and five ichneumonid wasps reported for the first time in Belgium and the Netherlands (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae), Belgian Journal of Entomology 122, pp. 1-142 : 48

Rhimphoctona melanura (Holmgren, 1860)

Another genus belonging to the former tribe of Porizontini. It belongs to the group of genera with the distal abscissa of CU meeting the nervellus in the hind wing. The lower mandibular tooth is longer than the upper tooth. The fore wing vein 2m-cu is meeting the areolet distinctly near the distal end. Their ovipositor is cylindrical, with the ovipositor tip slightly curving ( TOWNES, 1970b; HORSTMANN, 1980a).

Recently the genus was revised by VARGA (2017). R. melanura is distinguished by having the hind coxae black, the mesoscutum more strongly sculptured, distinct costula on propodeum (which has the area superomedia wider than area basalis), short temples and a densely punctuated mesopleuron. These species are ectoparasitoids of wood-boring beetles, mainly Cerambycidae ( VARGA, 2017) . Possibly, these parasitoids will become more common, following the tendency of many ‘dead wood’-ichneumonids migrating from eastern parts of Europe to the western part ( VERHEYDE et al., 2020a).

First report for the Netherlands; unconfirmed in Belgium.

MATERIAL EXAMINED:

THE NETHERLANDS: • 1 ♀; Wageningen (GE); 51°59’38”N 5°40’06”E; 18/v/2020; P. Hoekstra leg.; coll . PH; field observation; G. Broad & P. Hoekstra det. (ObsID: 192511518) .