Bracon Fabricius, 1804

Samartsev, Konstantin & Ku, Deok-Seo, 2021, New records of Braconinae (Hymenoptera, Braconidae) from South Korea, Journal of Hymenoptera Research 83, pp. 21-72 : 21

Genus Bracon Fabricius, 1804

Remarks.

The subgeneric classification of the genus requires revision. Most of the Palaearctic species of Bracon are arranged in three subgenera, Bracon s. str., Glabrobracon Fahringer, and Lucobracon Fahringer ( Tobias 1986). The species that may be unambiguously attributed to one of the discussed subgenera are more common in the West Palaearctic, but classification of a big part of species is difficult, because they frequently combine diagnostic characters of different subgenera. For example, some of otherwise obvious members of Glabrobracon have the wide hypostomal depression (one of the main characters of the subgenus Glabrobracon Lucobracon , e.g. B. brevis Telenga and B. otiosus Marshall), others have the enlarged basitarsi (characterising the section Orthobracon Fahringer of the subgenus Orthobracon Bracon ; e.g. B. pauris Beyarslan and B. rozneri Papp). This ambiguity of subgeneric diagnoses caused instability of composition of the main subgenera in interpretation by different authors. For example, the type species of the genus, B. minutator (Fabricius), in violation of the Principle of Coordination has been placed in the section Orthobracon of the subgenus Orthobracon Bracon by Tobias (1986) and together with the most part of the latter section has been transferred to the subgenus Orthobracon Glabrobracon by Papp (2008). These problems are most noticeable in the Far Eastern species which morphological peculiarity has rendered the diagnoses of the main subgenera very diffused and almost inapplicable ( Tobias and Belokobylskij 2000). Thus, until reliable criteria of the subgeneric division of Bracon are established, we consider the species of Glabrobracon and Lucobracon in the nominative subgenus.