Arabian Peninsula

The Arabian Peninsula is probably the less-studied area in the planet regarding microgastrines. Within such a large expanse of land, covering more than 3×106 km2, only two species and one genus of Microgastrinae had been recorded so far: Cotesia bignellii (Marshall, 1885) from the United Arab Emirates and Cotesia ruficrus (Haliday, 1834) from Yemen (Yu et al., 2012). Even for the northernmost areas of the Arctic the documented diversity of microgastrine wasps is much higher than what was known for the Arabian Peninsula (e.g. Fernández-Triana, 2010).

An upcoming paper (part of the volume 6 on the Arthropod Fauna of the UAE series) will change that by recording another 18 species of Microgastrinae for the Arabian Peninsula (including 12 new species) and 16 additional genera, plus another 70+ species only determined to genus and waiting for further study. 

We will soon be adding here more information and pictures on those species.

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith