taxonID	type	description	language	source
038F7812CF58FFB439CCFE2D7A967809.taxon	description	Our first encounter with E. agona was in November 2000 at three different localities in Uganda Busukuma and Lyantonde sub-counties in Bulisa, Wakiso and Lyantonde districts, respectively (Otim 2005). Two specimens collected from the National Agricultural and Animal Production Research Namulonge (now the National Crops Resources Research Institute) in August 2001 were sent to the History Museum, London, in late 2001 and identified morphologically as a new species of Encarsia 2001, the species has been referred to as ‘ blackhead Encarsia ’ because of the distinctively dark contrast to most of the rest of the body. Until 2018, the species was considered probably unisexual males were discovered eventually. Until now, E. agona has never been described morphologically, nor genome been characterised. The ecological services provided by the species were also uncertain due significant nomenclatural and systematic challenges faced by the B. tabaci whitefly research community that time (De Barro et al. 2011; Boykin et al. 2018). A multinational project to better understand the B. tabaci - complex and its impact on African production systems has led to the recovery of significant numbers of parasitoid species from whitefly nymphs, amongst which the ‘ blackhead Encarsia ’ was regularly encountered, though lected (Macfadyen et al. 2021; Tay et al. 2021). In this study, we present the first morphological and report on the draft mitochondrial genome. The latter represents the first mitochondrial DNA characterisation of an aphelinid wasp native to Africa, and details significant gene rearrangements, gene loss, and aberrant tRNA gene secondary structures in the mitochondrial genome.	en	Polaszek, A., Otim, M. H., Briscoe, A., Court, L., Macfadyen, S., Schmidt, S., Geng, H. (2025): Morphological and molecular description, and draft mitogenome Encarsia species (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a parasitoid tabaci species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) on cassava. Journal of Natural History 59 (41 - 44): 2441-2461, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164, URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164
038F7812CF5EFFB239CCFF187AFC7D19.taxon	description	to gDNA extraction, all specimens were visually confirmed by the first author as Encarsia agona.	en	Polaszek, A., Otim, M. H., Briscoe, A., Court, L., Macfadyen, S., Schmidt, S., Geng, H. (2025): Morphological and molecular description, and draft mitogenome Encarsia species (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a parasitoid tabaci species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) on cassava. Journal of Natural History 59 (41 - 44): 2441-2461, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164, URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164
038F7812CF5FFFB339CCFEB87DED786A.taxon	description	Poorly assembled regions such as between intergenic regions were reassembled by introducing gap lengths (inserting between 50 – 100 Ns) followed by reassembling using the sensitivity detailed above. This process of quality checks / gap insertion / reassembling was repeated until no overlapping ambiguity of assembled intergenic regions was detected. This process enabled sequence fragments representing overlapping intergenic regions to be identified and to be into a high-quality contig. For post-assembly mitogenome annotation, we used the MITOS program (Bernt et al. 2013), specifying genetic code 5 (invertebrate mitochondrial) with visualisation manual fine-tuning of the annotated mitogenomes in Geneious v. 8.1.9.	en	Polaszek, A., Otim, M. H., Briscoe, A., Court, L., Macfadyen, S., Schmidt, S., Geng, H. (2025): Morphological and molecular description, and draft mitogenome Encarsia species (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a parasitoid tabaci species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) on cassava. Journal of Natural History 59 (41 - 44): 2441-2461, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164, URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164
038F7812CF5DFFB13B10FF797A357962.taxon	description	(Figures 1 – 4): lsid: zoobank. org: act: 9 EB 39 F 43 - 471 B- 459 D- 8801 - A 261 DF 3 F 8 A 36 Encarsia: Otim et al. 2005: Biocontrol: 87, 89. Encarsia sp. Otim et al. 2018: Israel J. Entomol.: 157 – 158 Female: Colour. (Figure 1 (A-F )). Antennae largely pale brown; C 3 (= F 6) slightly darker than remainder the antenna. Head dark brown, perimeters of compound eyes and stemmaticum pale; compound ocelli red. Pronotum and anterior ½ – ⅔ of mesoscutal midlobe the same shade of brown as head. brown anteriorly. Acropleura, lateral propodeum and base of mesosoma (T 1) dusky brown; T 2 – T brown laterally. Legs uniformly pale; wings very faintly infuscate below the marginal vein. uniformly pale. Colour variation. Infuscation of the axillae, acropleura, propodeum and metasoma is markedly some paratypes. Female: Morphology. (Figure 1 (A-F )). Head with mediofrontal line, transfacial line and ocular-torular lines complete, narrow. Scrobes smooth with 3 pairs of setae. Stemmaticum with laterally elongate sculpture. Antennal formula: 1,1,3,3; scape 1.8 x pedicel length; pedicel 2.0 x F 1; F 1 equal to F 2; F 3 funicle 0.65 x clava; F 6 very slightly oblique. Flagellum with the following number of longitudinal 0; F 2: 0; F 3: 1; F 4: 3; F 5: 3; F 6: 3. Mandibles with 2 small teeth and a truncation. Maxillary palps 2 - Midlobe of mesoscutum with 4 setae; each lateral lobe with 1 seta; each axilla with 1 seta; mesoscutellum with 4 setae. Sculpture of mesoscutal midlobe reticulate; sculpture of axillae longitudinally Mesoscutellum with broad longitudinal reticulate sculpture centrally, becoming transverse laterally wing submarginal vein with 2 setae centrally, 1 seta in basal cell (1 – 2 in paratypes), 5 setae on margin of marginal vein (4 in some paratypes). Length submarginal = marginal vein. Maximum length wing 2.9 x fore wing width, maximum width of wing 2.2 x longest seta on marginal fringe. Distal posterior of fore wing very sparsely setose, resembling the condition in the Encarsia perflava species group. Ovipositor 0.9 x mid tibial length; third valvulae 0.38 x ovipositor length; second valvifer 1.2 x third (Figure 2 B). Tarsal formula 5 - 4 - 5. Mid tibial spur 0.77 x corresponding basitarsus (Figure 2 E). Metasomal T 1 – T 7 with 0, 1 + 1, 1 + 1, 1 + 1, 1 + 2 + 1, 1 + 2 + 1 and 4 setae, respectively.	en	Polaszek, A., Otim, M. H., Briscoe, A., Court, L., Macfadyen, S., Schmidt, S., Geng, H. (2025): Morphological and molecular description, and draft mitogenome Encarsia species (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a parasitoid tabaci species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) on cassava. Journal of Natural History 59 (41 - 44): 2441-2461, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164, URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164
038F7812CF54FFB939CCFE287A777AB2.taxon	description	Morphological identification of Bemisia tabaci- complex species has always been extremely challenging in some cases has been made possible only very recently (MacLeod et al. 2022). In the present study total of eight candidate parasitised Bemisia 3 rd / 4 th instar pupae, sequencing of successfully partial cox 1 sequences from four samples indicated they were parasitised by E. agona based on HISTORY identity (Supplemental Data 08 – 11; Polaszek et al. 2025) to the cox 1 gene of our assembled draft E mitogenomes. Overall partial cox 1 sequence identity (473 bp- 616 bp) between E. agona individuals (from Bemisia tabaci SSA 1 host pupae) and the HTS assembled cox 1 gene from the mitogenome ranged 99.2 % to 100 % based on pairwise nucleotide distance (p - dist) estimates. Species identification of Bemisia pupae based on sequence analysis indicated that these pupae belonged to B. tabaci (Supplemental Data 12 – 15; Polaszek et al. 2025). Studies are ongoing to determine whether Bemisia SSA 1 is conspecific with B. manihoti Frappa (Madagascar) and / or Bemisia gossypiperda var Ghesquière (D. R. Congo), currently synonyms of B. tabaci (Mound and Halsey, 1978).	en	Polaszek, A., Otim, M. H., Briscoe, A., Court, L., Macfadyen, S., Schmidt, S., Geng, H. (2025): Morphological and molecular description, and draft mitogenome Encarsia species (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a parasitoid tabaci species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) on cassava. Journal of Natural History 59 (41 - 44): 2441-2461, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164, URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2025.2534164
