Conostigmus bacilliger ( Kieffer, 1906 )

Trietsch, Carolyn, Mikó, István, Ezray, Briana & Deans, Andrew R., 2020, A Taxonomic Revision of Nearctic Conostigmus (Hymenoptera: Ceraphronoidea: Megaspilidae), Zootaxa 4792 (1), pp. 1-155 : 24-25

Conostigmus bacilliger ( Kieffer, 1906)

Species Comments and History. Kieffer (1906) described this species from material collected from San Mateo, California, with the female unknown. According to Kieffer (1906), characteristics of this species include a black body with light brown legs, wings present and macropterous, notauli and median mesoscutal sulcus complete, and “1. Glied kaum so lang wie die zwei folgenden mitsammen” (pg. 258), which we interpret as the scape being barely as long as the pedicel and F1 together (the redescription provided in Kieffer (1914) specifies “Scapus kaum so lang wie die 2 folgenden Glieder zusammen”, pg. 220). The key in Kieffer (1906) distinguishes this species from others by the “2. Fühlerglied nicht halb so lang wie das 3.” (pg. 258) and the “analsegment mit zwei langen stäbehenartigen Auhängseln” (pg. 258), which we interpret as the harpe protruding from the metasoma. This is hardly a speciesspecific characteristic, though it may hint that this species has long harpe, like C. longiharpes , C. abdominalis or C. pulchellus .

Kieffer (1914) repeats much of the original description, though the key adds that this species has “Scheitel ohne Mittellängefurche” (pg. 170), as opposed to “Scheitel mit einer Mittellängefurche hinter den ocellen” (pg. 170), which we interpret as the species lacking a preoccipital furrow. This would distinguish it from C. longiharpes , C. abdominalis and C. pulchellus , which all have a preoccipital furrow.

The location of Kieffer’s type material is unknown, and the characters given in the original description could apply to several different species of Conostigmus . We consider Conostigmus bacilliger as a species inquirenda.