Apanteles piceotrichosus Blanchard (Hymenoptera, Braconidae), first record from México, new molecular and biological data
2025
Susana E. Rodríguez-Rodríguez | José L. Fernández-Triana | J. Refugio Lomeli-Flores | Marcelino Martínez-Núñez | Esteban Rodríguez-Leyva | Héctor González-Hernández | Julio S. Bernal
Between 1994 and 1995, Cotesia vestalis (Haliday 1834) (Hymenoptera, Braconidae) was introduced from the USA to Mexico to set up a biological control program for Plutella xylostella; nevertheless, its field establishment was never confirmed. From 2020 to 2024, a braconid parasitoid on P. xylostella larvae was collected in broccoli in Guanajuato state, the main brassicas producer in Mexico. Those collections had initially been linked to the former releases, but this work corroborated that C. vestalis has not been recovered in Guanajuato, but rather an unidentified species of another braconid was confirmed. The objective of this work was to identify it with classical and molecular taxonomy, and to describe its basic biology under laboratory conditions. Morphological identification was performed using the descriptions of Blanchard (1994) and molecular analysis was performed using the 16S, 28S and COI markers. The parasitoid was identified as Apanteles piceotrichosus Blanchard, this species has been previously reported only from Argentina, Chile and Brazil, so it represents the first record for Mexico and its gene sequence is reported for the first time. A. piceotrichosus is a solitary koinobiont endoparasitoid of P. xylostella larvae. The egg is hymenopteriform with an incubation period of 0.92 d; larval and pupal stages lasted 5.86 ± 0.01 d, and 5.65 ± 0.02 d, respectively. Overall, there were 12.43 ± 0.01 d from egg to adult emergence. With honey availability, females and males lived 16.08 ± 0.19 and 17.58 ± 0.54 d, respectively.
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