Leucospis dorsigera Fabricius, 1775

Suárez, Daniel, 2017, Three new Hymenoptera species for the Canary Islands (Spain)., Arquivos Entomolóxicos 18, pp. 267-270 : 268-269

Leucospis dorsigera Fabricius, 1775 ( Fig. 1c )

GRAN CANARIA : Tenteniguada (Valsequillo), 28 R 447984 3094638, 09.VII.2017, 1 ♀ on Foeniculum vulgare ; 29.VII.2017, 1 ♂ on F. vulgare ; 10.VIII.2017, 1 ♀ and 1 ♂ on F. vulgare .

Global distribution: From Eastern Russia through Western Europe to North Africa ( Noyes, 2017).

This species is a known parasitoid of several Megachilinae species ( Noyes, 2017). The family Leucospidae had not been reported before for the Canary Islands. It has been observed simultaneously with Vespula vulgaris (Linnaeus, 1758) , that never interacted with L. dorsigera .

With these three new records, the current richness of the assemblage of the Canary Islands Hymenoptera is raised to 1,046 species. Regarding to the species recent discovery, there is no evidence to consider any of them as introduced. The hypothesis that these species had been overlooked along past chorological surveys seems unlikely, especially for C. perezi and E. hypsae , due to the big sampling effort done in Apoidea species ( Hohmann et al., 1993). Instead of that, it should be considered that an early colonization has taken place. Regarding C. perezi , presumably it arrived from the northwest coast of Africa, which is 96 km off the coast of Fuerteventura. A possible explanation for this colonization could be the temperature increase experienced in the Canary Islands ( Martín et al., 2012; Cropper & Hanna, 2014; Luque et al., 2014) together with the absence of closely related species.

Figures

Fig. 1. Distribution of the new records in the Canary Islands. Red dots indicate the localities of Colletes perezi while the orange one indicates the locality of Ectemnius hypsae and Leucospis dorsigera. a.- Colletes perezi on Tamarix canariensis. b.- Ectemnius hypsae on Foeniculum vulgare. c.- Leucospis dorsigera on Foeniculum vulgare.