Biconus, Santos & Brady, 2024

Santos, Bernardo F. & Brady, Seán G., 2024, Leveraging museum specimens, genomics and legacy datasets to unravel the phylogeny and biogeography of cryptin wasps (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae, Cryptini), Zoologica Scripta 53 (3), pp. 338-357 : 353

4.3.9 | Clade H: Lymeon group

This large clade of mostly Neotropical species was recovered with the same generic composition as in S17. Within the group, one large subclade is composed of species that show the ‘Dutilleul syndrome’ characters to varying extent, with a tendency towards subspherical heads, modified antennal tips, inflated fore tibiae and stout ovipositors. Some of these taxa, such as Digonocryptus , Distictus and Fortipalpa , had been previously assigned to Townes' Gabuniina , which roughly corresponds to the ‘ Gabunia group’ of S17. Supeleto, Santos, Brady, and Aguiar (2020) had found that the newly described Acrosnemus was part of this subgroup and a sister to Melanocryptus . Notably, our study shows that the large Neotropical genus Digonocryptus seems to be non-monophyletic, with D. pontagus and D. zatheos appearing outside of the main Digonocryptus clade. Indeed, D. pontagus had been only ‘tentatively assigned’ to Digonocryptus , and D. zatheos lacks some of the most distinct traits of the genus such as the teeth or tubercles on the clypeal margin. In addition, the limits between Digonocryptus and the largely Andean Cyclaulus need to be verified carefully in future studies and it may be that the two genera need to be synonymized.

As previously shown by the tree in S17, the synonymy of Biconus with Anacis performed by Porter (2004) is unjustified in phylogenetic grounds; since the former genus seems to be monophyletic, phylogenetically distant from Anacis and clearly diagnosable (see key in Townes, 1970), we hereby revalidate Biconus stat. rev.

Harpura is a monotypic genus that bears a strong similarity to the Neotropical genera of Townes' Mesostenina (e.g. Polycyrtus , Acorystus , Cryptanura ): small and elongated ovipositor; polished and terete T1; and body overall shiny and polished. In addition, its distinctly downcurved ovipositor is similar to that of some Neotropical species of Mesostenus . Surprisingly, the genus was not recovered as closely related to any of these taxa but as a member of the Lymeon group, in the same clade of other morphologically unusual genera such as Latosculum , Lagarosoma and Prosthoporus .

The small and apparently rare Leptarthron , another new generic addition to the Cryptini tree, was recovered as sister to Golbachiella ; both genera are generally small-bodied but have little similarity in more specific morphological characters. Similarly, the singular genus Hypsanacis was recovered as a somewhat isolated lineage within the Lymeon group, which is in accordance with the lack of particularly similar taxa among Cryptini .

Another addition to the Lymeon group was the small genus Strabotes ; it was recovered as sister to the morphologically similar Mallochia ; the two genera are keyed out together in the key of Townes (1970) and both have a generally subcylindric body, T1 short and stout and a small tooth on the clypeal margin. As in S17, our tree suggests the paraphyly of Baryceros with respect to Lamprocryptidea , but a more refined sampling of the two genera is needed to settle the taxonomic limits and identity of both genera. Likewise, Lymeon again appears as a polyphyletic taxon, but a proper assessment of this large Neotropical lineage will depend on much deeper taxon sampling.