Encarsia agona Otim and Polaszek, 2025

History of Encarsia agona Otim and Polaszek

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.