New synonymies in the Anagrus incarnatus Haliday ‘species complex’ (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae) including a common parasitoid of economically important planthopper (Hemiptera: Delphacidae) pests of rice in Asia

ABSTRACT

Anagrus nilaparvartae Pang and Wang has been recorded frequently as an egg parasitoid of rice planthoppers in SE Asia, especially of brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens (Stål). However, what appears to be the same species was often identified either as the morphologically similar Holarctic species Anagrus incarnatosimilis Soyka (as A. incarnatus Haliday) or misidentified as an unrelated, strictly New World species A. flaveolus Waterhouse, which, unlike A. nilaparvartae, does not belong to the A. incarnatus ‘species complex’ of Anagrus (Anagrus Haliday). Besides being mostly geographically separate from each other (except in the Eastern Palaearctic region), A. nilaparvatae and A. incarnatosimilis were not known to share any hosts. Using a combination of genetic analyses and morphometric methods, specimens of A. incarnatosimilis collected in Europe were shown to be not significantly different from those of A. nilaparvatae reared from eggs of rice planthoppers and leafhoppers mainly in Taiwan and also in Malaysia. Moreover, both A. incarnatosimilis and A. nilaparvatae as well as the morphologically very similar Nearctic species A. columbi Perkins were found to be genetically identical to the common Palaearctic species A. incarnatus Haliday based on both CO1 (mitochondrial) and ITS2 (nuclear) gene regions. Consequently, A. columbi Perkins syn. n. and A. nilaparvatae Pang and Wang syn. n. are synonymised under A. incarnatus, which is re-diagnosed and illustrated. Anagrus incarnatosimilis Soyka stat. rev. (along with its eight current synonyms) is reinstated as a synonym of A. incarnatus.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:70441879-F52B-46FD-8136-6CDAC7B76511

KEYWORDS:

• Chalcidoidea
• taxonomy
• host associations
• Holarctic region
• Oriental region
• natural enemy
• Cicadellidae
• egg parasitoid

Acknowledgements

We thank Vladimir V. Berezovskiy (UCRC) for mounting specimens. We are also grateful to Andrew Polaszek (Natural History Museum, London, UK) and other collectors for providing valuable information and donating specimens for our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.