More pictures of Canadian species of Microgastrinae

For the past two months I have been really busy finishing a large paper on Apanteles from Mesoamerica -which will be mentioned in a future post here. During that time I have received invaluable help from many people, and without them I would not be able to finish the job, not even close. Two of the most helpful among my long list of "guardian angels" have been Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet from the CNC -well, to be honest, they have supported me for over seven years...

Caroline and Henri have been taking hundreds of photos for the paper mentioned before. As a "byproduct" of their work, we have ended with some new pictures of species previously described from Canada. In this post I share color photos for three of those species, to be continued in future posts with more species.

The three species of today were described and partially illustrated in a 2010 Zookeys paper, but the pictures shown below are new and provide more morphological details. Altogether with the images from Zookeys -which can also be freely accessed and downloaded- we now have a much better documentation of those species... hopefully more Canadian microgastrines will follow this trend.

Apanteles huberi Fernández-Triana, 2010. This species will be the focus of an additional post, due to the fact that it is very close to Apanteles fumiferanae Viereck, 1912 -which has already been featured in this blog. Both species show are very similar morphologically, and their DNA barcodes are also remarkably close. Stay tuned for more details on why they are different...

Apanteles huberi, lateral view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Apanteles huberi, frontal view of the head. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Apanteles huberi, dorso-lateral view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Labels of the holotype specimen, CNC.

Apanteles jenniferae Fernández-Triana, 2010. Another species related to A. fumiferanae, although much more distinctive as for morphology goes. Unfortunately, there are no DNA barcodes available for this species.

Apanteles jenniferae, lateral view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Apanteles  jenniferae, dorsal view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Apanteles jenniferae, fore wing details. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Labels of the holotype specimen, CNC.

Apanteles masmithi Fernández-Triana, 2010. One of the few Nearctic species of Apanteles with elongated face and bilobated glossa. Mark Shaw and I are planning a review of the Holarctic species of Apanteles with elongated faces, thus this species will be featured again in a paper, hopefully soon.

Apanteles masmithi, dorsal view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Apanteles masmithi, lateral view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

Apanteles masmithi head, frontal view. Photo taken by Caroline Boudreault and Henri Goulet (CNC).

 

Labels of the holotype specimen, CNC.