The genus Neoclarkinella was described from India in 1996 by Rema and Narendran. Currently it comprises two species, from China and India. Those species have been described within the last 20 years or so, and the information on them is extremely scarce, with just seven papers in the scientific literature referring to Neoclarkinella. However, the genus is actually quite diverse and spread in the Old World tropics, especially Southeast Asia. In the Canadian National Collection, Ottawa (CNC), there are many specimens (mostly from Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, China, etc.), representing at least two dozen undescribed species. Many CNC specimens have also been sampled for DNA (CO1 gene) and the resulting barcodes were made freely available recently (in a paper that can be downloaded here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1755-0998.12038/abstract).
Neoclarkinella can be recognized by the presence of a complete transverse carina in the propodeum in combination with a complete median longitudinal carina. Also, the first metasomal mediotergite has a large, rounded depression centrally in the anterior half (usually of a different, paler colouration compared to the rest of the tergite), and the first mediotergite itself strongly narrows towards posterior margin. The specimens are rather large (for Microgastrinae standards), and might be confused with a group of species of the genus Choeras as well as specimens of an undescribed genus -all of them relatively common in samples from the Old World tropics.
Other than its distribution (and potential diversity), nothing is known about their potential hosts. And the limits of the genus, from a taxonomic point of view, remain unsolved at present. Until now there were no photographs of specimens of the genus avaiable, but just two line drawings in a 2005 paper describing the second Indian species, Neoclarkinella punctata (of authors Ahmad, Pandey, Haider and Shujauddin); and a couple of scanning electron microscope images of the Chinese/Indian species Neoclarkinella vitellinipes (of authors You and Zhou) published in 2004 in a book about Chinese microgastrines (Chen and Song, 2004).
The genus Neoclarkinella was described from India in 1996 by Rema and Narendran. Currently it comprises two species, from China and India. Those species have been described within the last 20 years or so, and the information on them is extremely scarce, with just seven papers in the scientific literature referring to Neoclarkinella. However, the genus is actually quite diverse and spread in the Old World tropics, especially Southeast Asia. In the Canadian National Collection, Ottawa (CNC), there are many specimens (mostly from Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, China, etc.), representing at least two dozen undescribed species. Many CNC specimens have also been sampled for DNA (CO1 gene) and the resulting barcodes were made freely available recently (in a paper that can be downloaded here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1755-0998.12038/abstract).
Neoclarkinella can be recognized by the presence of a complete transverse carina in the propodeum in combination with a complete median longitudinal carina. Also, the first metasomal mediotergite has a large, rounded depression centrally in the anterior half (usually of a different, paler colouration compared to the rest of the tergite), and the first mediotergite itself strongly narrows towards posterior margin. The specimens are rather large (for Microgastrinae standards), and might be confused with a group of species of the genus Choeras as well as specimens of an undescribed genus -all of them relatively common in samples from the Old World tropics.
Other than its distribution (and potential diversity), nothing is known about their potential hosts. And the limits of the genus, from a taxonomic point of view, remain unsolved at present. Until now there were no photographs of specimens of the genus avaiable, but just two line drawings in a 2005 paper describing the second Indian species, Neoclarkinella punctata (of authors Ahmad, Pandey, Haider and Shujauddin); and a couple of scanning electron microscope images of the Chinese/Indian species Neoclarkinella vitellinipes (of authors You and Zhou) published in 2004 in a book about Chinese microgastrines (Chen and Song, 2004).