Integrated taxonomy unveils new species of Trigonalyidae (Insecta, Hymenoptera) from Yunnan, China

Abstract

Trigonalyidae are rarely collected hyperparasitoids that attack the larvae of Ichneumonoidea, and Tachinidae associated with phytophagous sawfly or Lepidopteran larvae, or primary endoparasitoids of Vespidae larvae. Trigonalyidae mainly occur in tropical and subtropical regions, but recent studies indicate that they are found to be fairly common in mountainous regions. In this study, DNA barcoding methods based on sequences of the COI gene were used to discriminate Trigonalyidae species from Yunnan Province, which is situated in a mountaineous area of southwest China. In total, 25 COI sequences belonging to 14 morphospecies of four genera were obtained. The intraspecific pairwise distances ranged from 0 to 3.3% and the interspecific pairwise distances ranged from 5.3% to 17.3%. The delimitations of all studied species are congruent with the morphological identification results in both ABGD and bPTP methods. Based on both morphological and molecular analyses, four species from Yunnan are described as new: Jezonogonalos eburnalva Zhang & Chen, sp. nov., Lycogaster umbonata Chen & van Achterberg, sp. nov., Taeniogonalos albidorsalis Zhang & Chen, sp. nov., and T. paradoxica Zhang & Chen, sp. nov.