Braconella minor Szépligeti, 1906

Abu El-Ghiet, Usama M., Edmardash, Yusuf A. & Gadallah, Neveen S., 2022, New species and records of braconid wasps from Farasan Archipelago (Jazan) Saudi Arabia, with notes on Diolcogaster mayae Shestakov, Zootaxa 5104 (1), pp. 49-79 : 52-54

Braconella minor Szépligeti, 1906

Figs 2 A–D

Braconella minor Szépligeti, 1906: 587 , ♀.

Description of the male: Body length: 5.0 mm; fore wing length: 4.2 mm.

Colour & vestiture ( Figs 2A–D ): Body generally black (including antennae), metasoma dark ferruginous, with T1, base of T2 and posterior margins of T2–4 ivory white to pale yellowish; temple and lower face just behind antennal bases and inner orbits of eyes, clypeus, mandibles (except black tip), and palpi are honey yellow; first and middle legs (except black coxae) yellowish, hind legs mostly black, except for the apex of femur and basal third of tibia yellowish, tibial spurs yellowish; sides of pronotum ferruginous yellow; tegula ferruginous to orange. Wings hyaline, with pterostigma and veins black. Body densely clothed with short whitish to silvery setae especially on mesosoma and hind legs.

Head ( Fig. 2C ): Transverse, more than 1.5× as wide as mesosoma; occiput finely alutaceous, shiny; frons coarser than occiput; eyes distinctly convergent behind, slightly emarginate to concave opposite to antennal base; temple 0.88× eye length in dorsal view; malar space distinctly short, 0.17× as long as eye length in front view. Antenna 22-segmented, scape 1.55× as long as wide, F1 1.3× F2, flagellomeres of middle third of flagellum subequal, last flagellomere tapered apically.

Mesosoma ( Figs 2A, B ): mesoscutum densely finely punctate, clothed with dense fine seta; notauli present, convergent and meeting at apex of mesoscutum; scutellum with simple, linear scutellar sulcus, propodeum nearly smooth and shiny, without median carina, lateral sides densely finely punctate, with fine whitish setae, median line shiny and smooth; pronotum laterally finely rugose; meso- and metapleura densely finely punctate, with dense fine whitish hairs as those covering mesoscutum and scutellum. Fore wing ( Fig. 2A ): about as long as body; with vein SR1 nearly reaching wing apex; vein r arising from middle of pterostigma, about 0.3× as long as vein 3-SR; SR1 longer than veins r and 3–SR combined; vein cu-a almost interstitial, resulting in the absence of vein 1–CU1; vein 1–M distinctly straight; vein 2–SR+M present, relatively long; pterostigma 2.6× as long as its maximum width, 0.7× as long as 1–R1. Legs: with somewhat flattened femora; hind femur 2.7× as long as broad, with an oblique, sharp triangular keel in the middle ventrally ( Fig. 2D ); hind basitarsus distinctly shorter than rest of tarsomeres combined ( Fig. 2D ).

Metasoma ( Figs 2A, B ): T1 parallel-sided, with a V-shaped depression basally, slightly elevated towards apex; T2 strongly emarginate baso-medially, greatly widened posteriorly, 0.6× as long as apical width; T3 and the following tergites are in the form of a transverse band, much wider than long, 2.2× as wide as median length; T2 and T3 are separated by a crenulate suture; all tergites finely rugose.

Material examined. 1♂, KSA: Jazan (Farasan Islands, Al-Sajid before Khotp ), 16.883482N 41.909728E, 17. ii. 2017, sweep net, leg. Usama M. Abu El-Ghiet & Tarek, M. El-Sheikh.

General distribution. South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe ( Yu et al. 2016), Saudi Arabia (Farasan Islands, Jazan) (new record).

Remarks. The genus Braconella is a first record for the Arabian Peninsula. Masi (1944) saw a male of Braconella and suggested that it was B. minor , however, he had some doubts as it differed substantially from the female he examined. Here we considered our specimen as being the unknown male of B. minor and describe it for the first time. The specimen examined here resembles the Tanzanian female described by Brues (1924), except for the following: metasoma with T1, base of T2 broadly, and posterior margin of T2–4 thin ivory white to pale yellowish ( Fig. 2B ) (in female the metasoma to apex of T5 ferruginous); vein r 0.3× as long as vein 3–SR ( Fig. 2A ) (two-thirds as long as 3–SR in female); vein SR1 distinctly longer than veins r and 3–SR combined ( Fig. 2A ) (as long as both veins combined in the female).

Figures

FIGURE 2. Braconella minor Szépligeti, 1906 (♂). A, lateral habitus; B, dorsal habitus; C, frontal view of head; D, hind leg (keel of hind femur indicated). A, B: scale bar (= 1.0×); C: 2.5×; D: 3.1×.