Theobroma cacao

Pérez-Benavides, Alba Lucía, Malagon-Aldana, Leonardo, Hanson, Paul & Serna, Francisco, 2022, New records and a voucher collection of parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera) inhabiting agroforestry systems in the colombian amazon basin, Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia 62, pp. 1-17 : 4-10

Parasitoid wasps in cacao agroecosystems

We recorded here 20 parasitoid wasp families. This number is similar to that observed in cacao agroecosystems areas in Brazil, where 31 families were reported from Bahia ( Sperber et al., 2004), then 30 from Itabuna ( Nakayama et al., 2008), and 30 from Ilhéus ( Sperber et al., 2012). The taxonomic composition of the families was almost the same in these studies and in ours. When we compare the taxa recorded from Bahia with those from the Colombian Amazon region, they are the same, except for Liopteridae , Megaspilidae , Agaonidae , Aphelinidae , Sclerogibbidae , Gasteruptiidae , Ichneumonidae , Monomachidae , and Proctotrupidae . The above-mentioned results of Sperber et al. (2004, 2012) and Nakayama et al. (2008) showed a high occurrence of Scelionidae and Braconidae . This is similar to our results, in which these families were mainly represented by the genera Telenomus and Lysiphlebus , respectively.

In cacao agroecosystems from Merida ( Venezuela), Mazón (2015) and Mazón et al. (2018) reported 33 and 23 families of parasitoid wasps, respectively. Again, the richest families were similar to what we obtained in this study: Braconidae , Ichneumonidae , Scelionidae , Pteromalidae , Figitidae , Encyrtidae , and Mymaridae . However, our results for Chalcidoidea showed a higher richest of Chalcididae , Pteromalidae , and Eulophidae . Taxonomic identifications of the parasitoids in those investigations were carried out to the family level, whereas we achieved genus and species level identifications, which offer far greater information about the biology ( Lenat & Resh, 2001). This is particularly true for parasitoid wasps, where the biology varies widely between species ( Branca et al., 2019). For example, many of the hymenopteran genera we found in the current survey, such as Telenomus ( Eberhard, 1975; Pardede, 1986), Brachymeria ( Entwistle, 1963) , Conura ( García & Montilla, 2010) , Aenasius, Anagyrus ( Ackonor, 2002) , Aprostocetus ( Kerrich,1963; LaSalle,1994), Perilampus , and Heterospilus ( García & Montilla, 2010) , have been previously record- ed as parasitoids of phytophagous species that feed on cacao.