Metablastothrix Sugonjaev 1964

Hosts. Hemiptera: Coccidae

claripennis (Compere 1928: 216) (Microterys)

Type. USNM

Distribution. N (Alameda, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Kern, Lassen, Los Angeles, Modoc, Monterey, Napa, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Shasta, Stanislaus, Yolo)

Host/habitat. Eulecanium tiliae, Parthenolecanium corni, P . fletcheri, P . quercifex

Remarks. This species has a Nearctic distribution, and is only reliably recorded from Coccidae (Noyes 2001) . There is a single record of it from Brazil (de Santis 1980: 195), which appears to be based on an earlier Brazilian catalog by Araújo e Silva et al. (1968). However, in the earlier work M. claripennis was not recorded from Brazilunder Encyrtidae (pp. 599–600) they list only 5 described species, three of which are now placed under Tanaostigmatidae . Instead this species is simply cited (page 100, as Microterys claripennis) as a parasitoid of Aetalion reticulatum (Linnaeus) ( Hemiptera: Aetalionidae). In my opinion, this is a dubious host record (no other encyrtids have been recorded parasitizing this family, and only Prionomastix has been recorded as attacking the closely related Membracidae). Sugonjaev & Trjapitzin (1988) opine that M. claripennis is actually a secondary parasitoid via Encyrtus fuscus, based on two lines of thought. The first is the incidence of hyperparasitism in closely related species, including the congeneric M. truncatipennis (Ferrière); however, the latter species has since been placed in the genus Blastothrix . The second is Compere’s unpublished notes from 1911–1912, although they note that Compere (1928) later stated nothing was known of the status (i.e.: a primary or secondary parasitoid) of M. claripennis . Thus its status remains unknown. Undetermined specimens of this genus have also been collected from Lassen, Marin and Yolo counties (CSCA, EMEC).