DNA Barcoding of the parasitoid wasp subfamily Doryctinae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) from Chamela, Mexico

Background and aims. The Doryctinae is a considerably diverse, poorly studied group of parasitoid wasps and one of the most diverse subfamilies within Braconidae. Taxonomic knowledge of this group remains highly incomplete, specially in the tropics. In Mexico, it has been reported as the subfamily with the highest number of recorded genera. A preliminary Barcoding study carried out in the Chamela region, located near the Mexican pacific coast in Jalisco, identified 185 barcoding species of Dorytinae assigned to 19 identified doryctine genera. This work updates the later study, representing a three years effort to assess the species richness of this subfamily for the Chamela region.

Materials and methods. Ten collecting field trips of 5 to 10 days each were carried out from June 2009 to May 2011. A 2% divergence criterion using the BIN system implemented in BOLD was followed in order to establish species boundaries among the specimens that were collected.

Results and conclusions. A total of 961 specimens were collected, from which 883 COI sequences were obtained. The sequences generated corresponded to 289 barcoding species and 30 identified genera. The most speciose genera were Heterospilus Haliday (170 spp.), Ecphylus Förster (19 spp.), Allorhogas Gahan (15 spp.) and Callihormius Ashmead (14 spp.). Addition of previously collected material increased the diversity of the subfamily in the region to 34 genera and 290 species. Paraphyly of Heterospilus with respect to Neoheterospilus and Heterospathius was again recovered. Twenty new species and two new genera (Sabinita Belokobylskij, Zaldívar-Riverón et Martínez, Ficobolus Martínez, Belokobylskij et Zaldívar-Riverón) have been described so far from the material collected in this work.