Apanteles Foerster, 1863

Apanteles Foerster, 1863 View in CoL

Apanteles Foerster, 1863: 245 View in CoL .

Type species.

Microgaster obscurus Nees, 1834 , by original designation and monotypy.

Remarks.

See Fernández-Triana et al. (2020) for full list of synonyms and additional information, including discussions on the limits of the genus in a global context, and for a world checklist of species. We do not alter the diagnosis of Apanteles given in Fernández-Triana et al. (2020), which is as follows: Apanteles can be recognised by the propodeum usually fully to partially areolated, rarely smooth and never with a median longitudinal carina; fore wing without an areolet; hind wing with the vannal lobe usually strongly concave or straight; ovipositor sheaths relatively long (however, a few species, including some described in this paper, have the sheaths much shorter); and the hypopygium almost always flexible and pleated (with rare exceptions, including two species described here).

Species with longer ovipositor sheaths can often be misidentified as Dolichogenidea , especially if the vannal lobe setosity is difficult to assess (i. e., depending on how setae are distributed and its length, at times this character cannot be interpreted unambiguously); however, Apanteles is very distinct from this genus using molecular data. Species of Apanteles with short ovipositor sheaths and an inflexible hypopygium could be confused with Parapanteles or Pholetesor , and it is possible that they may actually belong in these genera. However, because the limits of both Parapanteles and Pholetesor are not well defined, and the species cluster closely with Apanteles in the phylogenies, we here choose to place these species in Apanteles and highlight them as candidates for future phylogenomic work revising the relationships within Microgastrinae .