Gabunia, Kriechbaumer, 1895

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 : 351

4.3.2 | Clade A: Gabunia group

This clade roughly corresponds to Townes' subtribe Gabuniina : composed exclusively of parasitoids of deeply concealed hosts. Species of this group show what Santos and Perrard (2018) termed the ‘Dutilleul syndrome’, a series of morphological adaptations to find and reach hosts under wood or other deep, hard substrates. Such traits include a hammer-like antennal tip, subspherical head, swollen fore tibia, strong oviposition muscles on T7–T8 and a stout, straight ovipositor with the tip of the ventral valve partially overlapping the dorsal valve. These traits, however, have convergently evolved in a number of other lineages of Cryptini , some of which had been previously assigned to Townes' Gabuniina . Herein we added members of four additional genera previously assigned to ‘Gabuniina’. (1) Spathacantha Townes was so far known only from the holotype of S. apicalis Townes ; we obtained a specimen that matches well the description and taxonomic delimitation of the genus but clearly belongs to a different species. It was recovered inside the Gabunia clade, closely related to other exclusively or largely Afrotropical genera such as Gabunia , Gerdius and Schreineria . (2) Trypha Townes was recovered as sister to Agonocryptus Cushman. This Neotropical genus is unusual among members of the Gabunia group for its slender body and thin ovipositor, and was so far known only from the type series; additional specimens were rediscovered in the same locality where the type series had been collected. (3) Dagathia Cameron was recovered as sister to Amrapalia Gupta ; the latter genus was erected to accommodate part of the species previously assigned to Dagathia , and the two genera are morphologically similar ( Gupta & Jonathan, 1970). (4) Tanepomidos Gupta & Jonathan , originally described in Townes' Gabuniina , was not recovered in this clade but instead as part of the Mesostenus group, within a small clade of Oriental species with overall similar morphology, particularly Perjiva .

The internal topology observed for the Gabunia group differs substantially from that of S17: notably, Kemalia Koçak and Echthrus Gravenhorst form a grade relative to the remaining members of the clade rather than being sister groups; and Anepomias Seyrig was sister to all other taxa except the two aforementioned genera. Among the remaining taxa of the clade, the Neotropical genera are found in two clades that form a grade leading to a single clade containing exclusively Old World taxa.