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Abstract
Background and aims. The preliminary results of a DNA barcoding study of the doryctine fauna of parasitoid wasps from the Chamela–Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, a region dominated by tropical dry forest, are presented. So far, three field trips have been carried out to the reserve and 468 specimens have been collected, of which 407 cox1 sequences were obtained.
Materials and methods. The general mixed Yule-coalescent model was applied to a phylogram to investigate the number of evolutionary units that can be detected from the DNA sequence data examined.
Results. A total of 185 barcoding species assigned to 20 identified doryctine genera were discriminated using the above model, 115 of which belong to the speciose genus Heterospilus, pointing out the extraordinary species richness of this subfamily of insects in a Mexican tropical dry forest.
Conclusion. On the basis of the DNA barcodes generated, Ptesimogastroides Braet & van Achterberg is proposed to be a junior synonym of Ptesimogaster Marsh syn. nov. Neoheterospilus was also found deeply nested within a large Heterospilus clade, suggesting the paraphyly of the latter genus.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Ma Cristina Mayorga-Martínez for mounting part of the specimens examined in this study and Andrew Polaszek, Estrella Hernández and Valeria B. Salinas-Ramos for their assistance in the field. The present research was supported by grants from the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO, México; grant number HB033) and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT; apoyo para la red temática del código de barras de la vida) (to A.Z.R.).
Declarations of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.