Chrysis elegans species-group

Rosa, Paolo, Wei, Na-sen & Xu, Zai-fu, 2017, One new species and three new records of Chrysis Linnaeus from China (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae), ZooKeys 669, pp. 65-88 : 66-67

Chrysis elegans species-group

Chrysis (Chrysis) elegans species-group: Linsenmaier 1959: 93 (key), 136 (diagnosis).

Chrysis elegans species-group: Kimsey and Bohart 1991: 325 (key), 345 (diagnosis), 329 (fig. 107d), 335 (fig. 109u), 341 (fig. 111a).

Diagnosis.

The elegans species-group is characterised by having habitus cylindrical and elongate; TFC weak or indistinct; face slightly broadened below, with subparallel and short MS; head broadened behind compound eyes in dorsal view; apex of T3 without distinct teeth, at most undulate and laterally with blunt angles; posterior margin of T3 bending downwards in females; body pubescence short and whitish; forewing radial cell closed. Body length usually 7 to 11 mm; only the North-African C. albitarsis is smaller (5-6 mm). Most Palaearctic species have red to golden red metasoma; females and sometimes males have mesosoma partially red. Males of C. elegans from eastern Mediterranean countries and Middle East can be entirely emerald green to golden green.

Description.

F1l/w = 1.5-2.5. Scapal basin medially polished, especially in females. TFC weak or faint, weakly M-shaped. MS = 0.5-1.0 MOD. Pronotum longer than or as long as mesoscutellum; mesopleuron with deep scrobal sulcus. T3 pit row with small, separated pits; T3 without apical teeth, at most undulate. Black spots on S2 usually large, sometimes antero-medially fused. Male genitalia with apex of gonocoxae and cuspis considerably hirsute ( Arens 2015).

Biology.

Members of this species-group are parasitoids of Apidae Megachilinae ( Linsenmaier 1959; Kimsey and Bohart 1991).

Species included.

The elegans species-group currently includes eighteen species: Chrysis albitarsis Mocsáry, 1889; C. angustifrons Abeille de Perrin, 1878; C. bovei (du Buysson, 1898a); C. castillana (du Buysson in André, 1896); C. deposita Nurse, 1904; C. dissimilis Dahlbom, 1854; C. eldari (Radoszkowski, 1893); C. elegans Lepeletier, 1806; C. hemera Semenov, 1954; C. io Semenov, 1910; C. joppensis du Buysson, 1887; C. lapislazulina sp. n.; C. lateralis Dahlbom, 1845; C. lepida Mocsáry, 1889; C. pushkiniana Semenov, 1967; C. pyrrha Semenov, 1967; C. rubricollis du Buysson, 1900; C. rueppelli du Buysson, 1904.

Distribution.

Palaearctic and Oriental regions.

Discussion.

The Chrysis elegans species-group is primarily a West-Palaearctic group ( Kimsey and Bohart 1991; Linsenmaier 1999; Rosa et al. 2015c), distributed from the Mediterranean basin to Middle East and central Asia, plus a new species herewith described. Only two species, Chrysis dissimilis Dahlbom, 1854, and C. lapislazulina sp. n. are known in the Oriental Region so far.

This species-group was established by Linsenmaier (1959), who originally included seven species: C. elegans Lepeletier, 1806; C. angustifrons Abeille de Perrin, 1878; C. joppensis du Buysson, 1887; C. castillana du Buysson in André, 1896; C. ignicollis Trautmann, 1926a; C. separata Trautmann, 1926a; and C. meyeri Linsenmaier, 1959. Later, Linsenmaier (1968) included also C. ashabadensis Radoszkowski, 1891 and synonymised C. meyeri with C. albitarsis Mocsáry. Kimsey and Bohart (1991) included twenty-one species, but their species-list has been partially modified in the last years: C. albitarsis Mocsáry which was placed into the cuprata species-group by Kimsey and Bohart (1991), was reintroduced into the elegans species-group by Linsenmaier (1999); C. kohli Mocsáry, 1889 was mistakenly placed into both genera Chrysis ( elegans species-group) and Pseudospinolia Linsenmaier, 1951 ( Kimsey and Bohart 1991: p. 428, sub C. kohlii , p. 547, as synonym of P. marqueti (du Buysson, 1887)), while it actually belongs to the genus Pseudospinolia ; C. emarginatula Spinola, 1808 and C. tingitana Bischoff, 1935, both included by Kimsey and Bohart (1991) into the elegans species-group, are clearly separated by morphological ( Linsenmaier 1959, 1999) and biological features, being parasitoids of Masarinae ( Vespidae ) ( Linsenmaier 1968; Mauss 1996; http://www.chrysis.net/forum/) and not of Apoidea, the only known hosts of members in the elegans species-group ( Linsenmaier 1959, 1999; Kimsey and Bohart 1991). Therefore, we follow Linsenmaier’s interpretation (1959, 1999), including these two species into the emarginatula species-group.

More recently, after type examination, C. ashabadensis was transferred into the succincta species-group and C. ignicollis was considered as a junior synonym of C. eldari (Radoszkowski, 1893) ( Rosa et al. 2015c); C. separata was considered as synonym of C. lateralis Dahlbom ( Rosa and Vårdal 2015). Arens (2015) elevated the subspecies C. ignicollis graeca Arens, 2004 to species rank, but in our opinion C. graeca is to be regarded as synonym of C. pushkiniana Semenov (Rosa in Arens 2015). C. goetheana Semenov, 1967 (whose type material has been examined at ZISP) is here transferred into the maculicornis species-group because of the following characteristics: male with shortened F1 and F2, female with distinct straight TFC, scapal basin entirely microridged, and MS very short.

The synonymy proposed by Trautmann (1926b), C. cupricollis Trautmann, 1921 = C. rubricollis du Buysson, 1900 is to be verified. We propose to consider C. mesochlora Mocsáry a nomen dubium, since the holotype of C. mesochlora was destroyed in Hamburg during the World War II ( Kimsey and Bohart 1991), and no specimen identified by Mocsáry can be traced in his collection in Budapest or in any other European collections. Moreover, this species has never been mentioned after Mocsáry’s description, except in Kimsey and Bohart (1991).