Alphomelon melanoscelis Deans, 2003

Fernandez-Triana, Jose L., Shimbori, Eduardo M., Whitfield, James B., Penteado-Dias, Angelica M., Shaw, Scott R., Boudreault, Caroline, Sones, Jayme, Perez, Kate, Brown, Allison, Manjunath, Ramya, Burns, John M., Hebert, P. D. N., Smith, M. Alex, Hallwachs, Winnifred & Janzen, Daniel H., 2023, A revision of the parasitoid wasp genus Alphomelon Mason with the description of 30 new species (Hymenoptera, Braconidae), ZooKeys 1175, pp. 5-162 : 5

Alphomelon melanoscelis Deans, 2003

Figs 49A-D , 50A-E

Distribution.

Argentina*, Brazil (AL, MT), Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela; collected in dry forest and rainforest sites.

Biology.

Reared from unidentified hesperiines feeding on grasses ( Poaceae ) and sedges ( Cyperaceae ) in Costa Rica ( Deans et al. 2003).

DNA barcoding.

BINBOLD:AAB8584 (but see Notes below).

Other specimens examined.

See notes below.

Notes.

BINBOLD:AAB8584 comprises what we consider to be several species, namely a) a few specimens of the “true” A. melanoscelis (in the restricted sense as it is understood in this paper), from Central and South America; b) a single specimen of A. paramelanoscelis and two specimens of A. rigoi , two new South American species described below; c) Costa Rican (ACG) specimens of A. guillermopereirai , a completely different species morphologically and which represents the majority of specimens currently associated with that BIN in BOLD. This BIN has a relatively large barcode variation, with the maximum distance between sequences within the BIN being 1.93% bp, a larger difference than the distance to the closest BIN in BOLD (BOLD:ADJ6568) which is only 1.08% bp. That second BIN represents A. andydeansi , a species with comparatively significant morphological differences (especially paler color of hind legs) and different host caterpillars.

Based strictly on the specimens of these species that are deposited in the CNC and that we could examine and study, the A. melanoscelis specimens cluster separate from specimens of A. guillermopereirai (although the barcode differences between the two species are <1% bp). This is an example of BINs failing to properly represent the species limits (as compared versus other criteria to delimit species such as morphology and biology). BINs containing more than one species have been commonplace with ACG speciose genera (e.g., Hebert et al. 2004, Burns et al. 2008, Fernandez-Triana 2019) although the discussion of the topic among the scientific community is ongoing and far from being resolved (e.g., Brower 2010; Meier et al. 2021).

In addition to the holotype (from Costa Rica, Heredia, which we examined, and it is illustrated here in Figs 49A-D ) and the paratypes from Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela mentioned in the original description of the species by Deans et al. (2003) (of those paratypes we could only examine a Brazilian specimen deposited in the CNC with voucher code CNCHYM 00036 and a sequence 164 bp long), we provided here a restricted concept of Alphomelon melanoscelis . The following specimens (not included in the original description) are associated with the species: a) additional specimens from Brazil (CNCHYM 00035, CNC2805178, and CNC704367); b) a new country record from Argentina which is based on a sequence in BOLD (specimen BIOUG24734-D06 with 585 bp); c) at least four ACG specimens (currently in BOLD as A. guillermopereirai ): DHJPAR0026277, DHJPAR0027666, DHJPAR0047176, and DHJPAR0049083; d) ACG specimen DHJPAR0020621, which had been associated to A. andydeansi based on sequence matching, is actually A. melanoscelis , based on morphological examination (this could represent an accidental labeling mistake or lab contamination). Other ACG specimens that in the future could be transferred to A. melanoscelis (based on molecular data) are DHJPAR0058243, DHJPAR0058276, and DHJPAR0056870, but we have not been able to study those specimens and thus cannot conclude on its status at present.

Specimens from Belize, which were included in the original description of A. melanoscelis not as paratypes but just as "other material examined" ( Deans et al. 2003: 25) are now considered to represent a separate species, A. rigoi . One of those Belize specimens rendered an almost complete barcode (573 bp), which allowed us to associate with this species additional specimens in the CNC from Venezuela (with voucher code WMIC 0349, not far from the locality of the Venezuelan paratype of A. melanoscelis ) and Colombia (see Notes under A. rigoi below).

A Mexican specimen in BOLD (in the same BIN and with voucher code 07TAPACH-01773) shows a reddish-brown metafemur and may represent a different species, not considered in this paper because we could not access that specimen.

Figures

Figure 49. Alphomelon melanoscelis Deans holotype female A habitus, lateral B fore wing pterostigma C metasoma, dorsal D habitus, dorsal.

Figure 50. Alphomelon melanoscelis Deans paratype female CNCHYM 00036 A habitus, lateral B head, frontal C wings D propodeum and metasoma, dorsal E mesosoma, dorsal.