The rarely recorded Polysphincta longa is probably widely overlooked in Europe as a result of confusion with the morphologically similar P. boops. Characters for the separation of these species are given, and host and distribution records, largely based on recent fieldwork, are presented. Araneus angulatus is shown to be the hitherto unknown host of P. longa, while all rearing records for P. boops are from Araniella species. P. longa is reported as new to the fauna of the United Kingdom and P. boops as new to Estonia.
The description of Polysphincta longa Kasparyan, 1976 was based on 10 females from Azerbaijan (holotype), Armenia and Primorsky Krai (Kasparyan 1976). The original description (Kasparyan 1976) and the only keys including this species (Kasparyan 1981, Kasparyan and Khalaim 2007) are in the Russian language, and the species has not been treated in any other work on European species. It has subsequently been recorded in Germany (Walter 1991, Schmidt and Zmudzinski 2003), Bulgaria (Ivanov 2002) and Poland (Kasparyan and Khalaim 2007, Horstmann and Floren 2008). In the papers giving records from Bulgaria and Germany it is not indicated how the specimens were distinguished from the very similar P. boops Tschek, 1869, nor is it stated that the records were the first for those countries, or indeed for Europe. The literature also seems to lack records of males of P. longa. Polysphincta boops is known to be a parasitoid of Araniella spp. (Hudson 1988, Jones 1988, Fitton et al. 1988, Shaw 1994) but the host of P. longa has hitherto been unknown (Yu et al. 2012).
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The main purpose of this paper is to give diagnoses of P. boops and P. longa in English to facilitate the recognition of P. longa in Europe, as it seems to occur in large parts of central Europe but is apparently overlooked because of its similarity to P. boops. This is indicated by a misidentified 80-year-old specimen in the collection of BMNH and the very few literature records of the species in Europe. Two males of P. longa are included in our material. We give new notes on the hosts of P. boops and present the first host records for P. longa.
The material examined is based on mainly reared specimens of P. boops in the collections of NRF from Finland and NMS from Britain, as well as some specimens collected within the Swedish Malaise trap project (SMTP). Apart from the paratype and a German and a British specimen in BMNH, the examined specimens of P. longa have been collected in Poland, either with yellow pan traps in Quercus canopy or on their hosts in spruce canopy.
In our rearing projects P. boops has been reared only from Araniella species (n=16). The only host determined to species level based on the genitalia is a single female A. cucurbitina. The single record of A. opisthographa (Jones 1988, Hudson 1988, Fitton et al. 1988) as host species was based on circumstantial evidence, i.e. adult males collected together with the parasitised juvenile specimen (Jones 1988). There is a single rearing record of P. boops from Theridion sp. in Brischke (1877), a record frequently referred to (Dalla Torre 1902, Aubert 1969) or apparently cited without reference (Šedivý 1963, Kasparyan 1981, Kolarov 1997). On the basis of what is known about the host specificity of the species of the Polysphincta genus-group (see Shaw 1994, Matsumoto and Takasuka 2010, Fritzén 2010, Fritzén and Fjellberg 2014), we consider such old, aberrant and unrepeated records (in this case from another host family) in the literature to be probably misidentifications of either the parasitoid or the host species. In our projects 14 males and 2 females have been reared successfully. We are unable to explain this odd sex ratio. Taking into account that the two reared females also were from Araniella species, the use of a different (and to us unknown) host for fertilized (female) eggs seems extremely unlikely. The only reasons we can think of is that either the species is so rare that females often fail to be mated (in which case they may still lay male-producing eggs), or that female mortality tends to be higher in immature stages, perhaps especially in captivity. However, neither is supported by any evidence in our projects.
When collected in July, the larvae on A. angulatus were large and they soon killed the spiders and made cocoons. Since P. boops and most other Palaearctic species of the Polysphincta group (though not Megaetaira madida (Haliday) (Fitton et al. 1988) and Zatypota maculata Matsumoto and Takasuka (Matsumoto and Takasuka 2010)) overwinter as minute larvae on their hosts (e.g. Fitton et al. 1988, Fritzén 2010, Matsumoto and Takasuka 2010), with the larvae subsequently developing rapidly in spring, this is probably the case with P. longa as well. The collection date of the parasitised A. angulatus with large larvae indicate a second generation and that P. longa is at least bivoltine.
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