A new species of Allorhogas (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Doryctinae) inducing ovule galls on Miconia chamissois Naudin, a potentially invasive shrub in the Brazilian cerrado

Six new species of Allorhogas (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Doryctinae) from south and southeast Brazil with host-plant record

“…Species of Allorhogas whose host records have been confirmed or reported from reliable observations have been reared from leaf and stem galls and fruits of species belonging to eleven plant families (Moreira et al 2017;Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2018). These records have also revealed the existence of different strategies of phytophagy within the genus, including gall induction on seeds, stems, fruits and floral buds (Macêdo and Monteiro 1989;Marsh 2002;Centrella and Shaw 2010;Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2018;Joele et al 2019), seed predation (Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2018) and phytophagous inquilinism on galls made by other insects (Moreira et al 2017). Moreover, some species of Allorhogas have been suggested to be parasitoids of other insects associated to galls (Marsh 2002;Centrella and Shaw 2013;Martínez and Zaldívar-Riverón 2013), though this has not been based on reliable rearing records and alternatively they could also be phytophagous inquilines.…”

“…Allorhogas Gahan (1912) is a braconid genus belonging to the subfamily Doryctinae, whose species have been reported to be mainly distributed in the Nearctic and Neotropical regions from south and northeast U.S. to central Argentina (Yu et al 2016;Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2014, 2018Samacá-Sáenz et al 2020). This genus currently contains 58 recognised species (Yu et al 2016;Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2018;Joele et al 2019;Samacá-Sáenz et al 2020), of which 50 are Neotropical and six Nearctic. The remaining two species were described from Iraq in the Middle East (A. semitemporalis Fischer) (Fischer 1960) and India (Shaikh and Chatterjee 2020), though their generic placement is considerably doubtful based on the provided information.…”

“…Recent molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that Allorhogas is polyphyletic (Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2014;Samacá-Sáenz et al 2019), and a taxonomic revision of the genus is in progress. Allorhogas, as currently known, appears to be particularly species-rich in Brazil based on material deposited in national collections, though only 11 species have been described to date for this country (Zaldívar-Riverón et al 2018;Joele et al 2019). Here we describe six new species of Allorhogas from south and southeast Brazil with host plant records for five of them, including three new host plant genera and a new host plant family (Aquifoliaceae).…”