Five new species of Nesoselandria Rohwer (Hymenoptera: Selandriinae) from India

Abstract

Rohwer (1910) erected the genus Nesoselandria taking Paraselandria imitratix Ashmead as its type species from Phillipines. Again Rohwer (1915) added a new species to this genus from Calcutta, India. Malaise (1944) shifted Aneugmenus anandalei Rohwer and Neobusarbia flavipes Takeuchi to this genus. Benson (1939) erected a new genus Melisandra taking Selandria morio (Fabricius) as its type species from Holarctic region, but Smith (1969) synonymized it under Nesoselandria Rohwer. Malaise (1944) made two additions -Nesoselandria sulciceps from Dehradun and N. turneri from Shillong. Some of the other important works concerning this genus from the oriental region include those of Enslin (1912), Rohwer (1916), Takeuchi (1928), and Forsius (1929, 1931a, 1931b, 1932, 1933), prior to which this genus was represented only by 22 species from this region. Only four species were on record from the Indian subcontinent. Following these contributions Saini and Vasu (1999), Vasu and Saini (1999a, 1999b), and Saini et al. (2001) added several new species to science under this genus from the Indian subcontinent. This genus is now represented by 25 species from India that includes the dealt herein five new species collected from the Himalayan region of northern and northeastern states. The present text deals with the descriptions and illustrations of the new species in question. The species are described following a standardized uniform pattern defined for the selandrine sawflies. Illustrations pertaining to genitalia and other morphological characters of taxonomic importance are provided. The host plants of these species remain unknown.