Neastymachus Girault, 1915

Singh, Sudhir & Srinivasa, Y. B., 2012, A new species of parasitic wasp Neastymachus Girault (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Encyrtidae) collected by fogging Vateria indica L. (Dipterocarpaceae) canopy in the Western Ghats of India, Journal of Threatened Taxa 4 (9), pp. 2883-2888 : 2884

Genus Neastymachus Girault

Neastymachus Girault, 1915:86 . Type species Neastymachus auraticorpus Girault , by monotypy.

Nikolskiella Trjapitzin and Pseudmicroterys Shafee, Alam & Agarwal are synonyms of the genus ( Noyes & Hayat 1984).

Diagnosis: Head in frontal view wider than high; antennal scrobes shallow or moderately impressed with lateral margins rounded, not longer than half the distance between a torulus and median ocellus. Funicle 6-segmented; club 3-segmented, apex rounded. Mandibles tridentate or with two sharp teeth and a truncation. Wing hyaline, marginal vein at least two times as long as wide. Hypopygium not extending more than two-thirds length along gaster; ovipositor either not exserted or only slightly exserted. Body generally yellow, orange or brownish-yellow to dark brown; gaster darker than rest of the body. Antenna yellowish, with scape and club may be brown. Legs completely pale yellow.

Comments: The type species of Neastymachus and the Palaearctic and Costa Rican species have short notaular lines (=parapsidal furrows) on the mesoscutum ( Dahms & Gordh 1997; Noyes 2010). The Indian species lack notaular lines on the mesoscutum. But a short curved darker line is present on either side of mesoscutum just behind the pronotum which is a narrow gap in the underlying muscles visible through translucent mesoscutum. However, reflections from sculptural patterns from this area show no sign of any groove or ridge. Similar pattern was also seen in the holotypes of N. axillaris and N. latiscapus . On the basis of setation on base of the fore wing, shape of gaster and location of the cercal plates and colour pattern of the pronotum, Hayat (1999) divided Indian species into two groups: the cerococci group with four species ( angustifrons , burksi , cerococci and latiscapus ) and the delhiensis group with two species ( axillaris and delhiensis ). Hayat did not elaborate on the colour of pronotum. It has been observed that all the species from India and Australia have a black spot or band on anterior face of pronotum and a corresponding dark band or spots on the occiput (same may be present on the African species but due to its darker colour these characters may not be distinguishable. All the species in cerococci group usually have a dark brown spot on the pronotum, whereas delhiensis group has a narrow dark brown band on the pronotum and also brown spots or band on the occiput of head behind eyes.

The genus belongs to tribe Discodini ( Hayat 2006; Noyes 2010). They are parasitoids of families Aclerdidae and Asterolecaniidae of Hemiptera ( Noyes & Hayat 1984) .

Species and distribution

Neastymachus is an old world genus with 14 described species (including the new one). The genus is represented by two undescribed species in the Nearctic region ( Noyes et al. 1997). The region wise distribution of species is as follows:

Afrotropical (1): Neastymachus dispar Prinsloo, 1996 .

Australian (1): Neastymachus auraticorpus Girault, 1915 .

Oriental (7, all from India): Neastymachus angustifrons ( Shafee, Alam & Agarwal, 1975) ; N. axillaris Singh, Agarwal & Basha, 1991 ; N. burksi ( Shafee,Alam &Agarwal, 1975) ; N. cerococci ( Shafee, Alam & Agarwal, 1975) ; N. delhiensis (Subba Rao, 1957) ; N. latiscapus Singh, Agarwal & Basha, 1991 and N. punctatiscutellum Singh , sp. nov.

Palaearctic (3): N. luteus ( Nikol’skaya, 1952), N. secundus (Trjapitzin, 1962) and N. japonicus (Tachikawa, 1970) .

Neotropical (2, from Costa Rica): N. orthanes Noyes, 2010 ; N. peyries Noyes, 2010 .