Ateleutinae

Kasparyan, D. R., 2022, A review of the genus Ateleute (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Ateleutinae) of North America with description of a new species, Zoosystematica Rossica (China) 31 (1), pp. 98-110 : 99

Subfamily Ateleutinae

Ateleutina Townes, 1967: 181 (as subtribe of Cryptini ); Townes, 1970: 142, 297, 490 (key, description, figure).

Ateleutinae : Santos, 2017: 672 (as subfamily, status promotus); Santos et al., 2018: 1057–1078 (molecular phylogeny; biogeography; descriptions of new genus and species from Australia and a new species from South America; key to genera).

Type genus: Ateleute Förster, 1869 , by monotypy.

Remarks. In support of considering this taxon as a subfamily, it is necessary to distinguish some of its peculiar features, which probably indicate the great age of this group. First, it is a globally distributed (predominantly Gondwanan) group, including Australia with an endemic genus. The second feature is the specialisation of the subfamily on Psychidae as hosts, one of the most primitive lepidopteran families at the base of Ditrysia and of the superfamily Tineoidea . And third, the presence of an unusual primitive areolet in Ateleute (probably, reversion or atavism) with a strongly elongate anterior side of the areolet (median portion of Rs) ( Figs 7, 15), is somewhat similar to the character state present in the ancestral families of the Ichneumonoidea ( Praeichneumonidae , Tanychoridae, Eoichneumonidae ) and, among recent groups, for example, in the genera Xenothyris Townes, 1969 and Poecilocryptus Cameron, 1901 (Labeninae), which branched off early in the evolution.