Addendum to a minimalist revision of Costa Rican Braconidae: 28 new species and 23 host records

Abstract

Twenty-nine species are treated, most of which have host caterpillar and food plant records, and all but one are new to science. The first host record for the agathidine genus Amputoearinus is given. Gnathopleura josequesadai Sharkey, sp. nov. is reported as a hyperparasitoid of fly larvae, the first such record for the genus. The following new species are diagnosed primarily using COI barcode data; Sharkey is the authority for all: Agathidinae: Aerophilus davidwagneri, Aerophilus fundacionbandorum, Aerophilus nicklaphami, Lytopylus davidstopaki, Lytopylus davidschindeli; Alysiinae: Gnathopleura josequesadai; Braconinae: Bracon andreamezae, Bracon franklinpaniaguai, Bracon rafagutierrezi, Bracon guillermoblancoi, Bracon oscarmasisi, Bracon pauldimaurai, Bracon shebadimaurae, Sacirema karendimaurae; Cheloninae: Chelonus minorzunigai; Homolobinae: Homolobus stevestroudi; Macrocentrinae: Macrocentrus michaelstroudi; Orgilinae: Stantonia gilbertfuentesi; Rhysipolinae: Rhysipolis stevearonsoni; Rogadinae: Aleiodes kaydodgeae, Aleiodes kerrydresslerae, Aleiodes josesolanoi, Aleiodes juniorporrasi, Aleiodes rocioecheverri, Aleiodes ronaldzunigai, Choreborogas jesseausubeli, Triraphis doncombi, and Yelicones mayrabonillae.

DNA barcodes on their own are not enough to describe a species

“…Overall, Sharkey, Baker, et al (2021) and Sharkey, Brown, et al (2021) are asking taxonomists to abandon their own scientific and intellectual goals because the requirement of research, scholarship and deep thought is inconvenient. While we do believe that barcode clusters are indeed useful as grouping statements, there is no compelling reason why they should be described as species.…”

“…In the context of parallel taxonomies, we feel we should briefly clarify a misunderstanding, which is specific to Sharkey, Baker, et al (2021) and Sharkey, Brown, et al, 2021), not the minimalist approach in general. Meierotto et al (2019), when first proposing the minimalist approach, failed to merge their new DNA barcode‐based species with existing species for which barcodes are not available.…”

“…Ahrens et al (2021) in particular feared this will lead to two competing taxonomic systems, one of which describes species based on DNA barcodes, the other mainly based on morphology, and both ‘consider the [species] names of the other faction doubtful’. Sharkey, Baker, et al (2021) and Sharkey, Brown, et al (2021) do not give a solution to this problem but suggest waiting until the gap between the systems is bridged by adding morphological data to the minimalist descriptions and/or by sequencing existing type specimens. In our opinion, this problem on its own is enough to make the minimalist approach untenable.…”

“…We feel that providing these should not have involved too much work for Sharkey, Janzen, et al (2021) either, considering that there are 23 authors on the article. In fact, Sharkey, Baker, et al (2021) recently took a step in this direction, by including some morphological diagnoses among very similar species.…”

More discussion of minimalist species descriptions and clarifying some misconceptions contained in Meier et al. 2021

“…Our point was that morphological evidence alone is not sufficient to resolve species limits in many taxa. This is clearly the case in the morphological treatments of species of Alabagrus by Leathers and Sharkey (2003), as illuminated by Sharkey et al (2021c). The problem is not that morphological evidence is non-existent, but rather that it is cryptic.…”