Abstract
Ageniella Banks, 1912 is a paraphyletic group exclusive to the Nearctic and Neotropical regions. The genus has a remarkable morphological diversity among species and strong sexual dimorphism, hampering taxonomic studies of it. Herein, we add two new species to the Neotropical fauna of Ageniella: A. caerulea sp. nov. belonging to the subgenus Ameragenia and A. ruschi sp. nov. belonging to the subgenus Priophanes; both species are described and illustrated. A brief discussion of subgeneric characters and an updated taxonomic key to the species of Ageniella known from Brazil are provided.
Highlights
Spider wasps (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae) are insects that supply spiders to their immature as the only food source (Fernandez 2006)
The studied specimens were loaned from the Brazilian collections at Instituto Nacional de Pesquisa da Amazonia (INPA), Manaus, Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo (MZUSP), São Paulo, and Coleção Entomológica da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES), Vitória
Diagnosis Ageniella caerulea sp. nov. is the only South American species with blue integument and purple-greenish metallic reflections; the legs are castaneous with bluish reflections and the tarsi are light castaneous (Fig. 1A); the antenna is castaneous; the clypeus is trapezoidal, blue with greenish reflection; and the forewing is hyaline with two darkened bands
Summary
Spider wasps (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae) are insects that supply spiders to their immature as the only food source (Fernandez 2006). A single spider is paralyzed after being stung and placed in a nest cavity with a single egg (Rodriguez et al 2016). The family is monophyletic and represented mainly by solitary species (Shimizu 1994; Pitts et al 2006; Waichert et al 2015). Pompilidae Latreille, 1804 are found on all continents, except Antarctica, but their greatest diversity of species occurs in the tropical regions (Wasbauer 1995). There are close to 5000 described species in Pompilidae, distributed in about 230 genera (Aguiar et al 2013) and five subfamilies (Waichert et al 2015). One of the most diverse genera in Ageniellini (Pompilidae: Pepsinae) is Ageniella Banks, 1912
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