Cotesia vestalis (Haliday, 1834)

Figs 4B, 31 C–E

Microgaster vestalis Haliday, 1834: 253 (lectotype, ♀, NMI).

Apanteles plutellae Kurdjumov, 1912: 226 .

Apanteles vestalis – Marshall 1872: 106 (transferred to Apanteles s.l.).

Cotesia plutellae – Mason 1981: 113 (transferred from Apanteles s.l).

Cotesia vestalis – Shaw 2003 (synonymy with C. plutellae).

For a full list of synonyms and bibliography, see Shenefelt (1972: 604, 659), Shaw (2003), Yu et al. (2016) and Fernández-Triana et al. (2020).

Diagnosis

Cotesia vestalis can be separated from all other species of Cotesia currently described from Australia and Papua New Guinea by the following combination of characters: T1 broadening consistently posteriorly, almost wedge shaped; scutellar disk with large, strong circular punctures; T3 with multiple rows of setae.

Material examined

TAIWAN • 1 ♀; Shanhua (AVRDC); 2 Mar. 1998; M. Keller leg.; “ Cotesia plutellae Kurd. ” Ex Plutella xylostella (l.); WINC .

Distribution

Theoretically introduced to all states of Australia, but recently found only in “southern states” and only infrequently (Furlong et al. 2008).

Host

Plutella xylostella (Linnaeus, 1758) (Plutellidae) . See Shenefelt (1972: 604, 659) and Yu et al. (2016) for extra-limital host records.

Remarks

Introduced to Australia in 1951 from Italy as a biological control agent against P. xylostella, but not considered well established or a significant parasitoid of this lepidopteran pest (Furlong et al. 2008). This species forms a distinct clade in the COI phylogeny (Fig. 1) using sequences available on BOLD from outside of Australia. No Australian specimens were sequenced in this study. See remarks under C. ruficrus for issues using the diagnostic characters presented in the key of Nixon (1974) for this species.