Iconella Mason 1981

The genus Iconella was erected by Mason (1981) to accommodate a group of Apanteles species with a sinuated vein cu-a in the hind wing, a character he interpreted as plesiomorphic among Microgastrinae. Fernández-Triana et al. (2013) also considered the presence of a median longitudinal carina on the propodeum (or the secondary loss of that carina, which occurs in some Palaeartic species but not in the New World ones) as a strong support for its generic status. DNA barcoding tends to clearly cluster the species of Iconella and Apanteles separately (e.g. Fernández-Triana et al. 2013; Smith et al. 2013).

Iconella includes all species of Nixon’s sundanus-group and part of the merula-group (Nixon 1965, Whitfield 1997). It is cosmopolitan, with 36 described species, most of them found in the Palearctic (Yu et al. 2012; Fernández-Triana et al. 2013). All species with known hosts are solitary parasitoids of microlepidoptera, especially concealed feeders (Whitfield 1997); Iconella isolata (Muesebeck, 1955) has been extensively studied in the tropics for biological control of a pest caterpillar (e.g. Bennett 1960, Bartlett et al. 1978).

The genus Iconella was erected by Mason (1981) to accommodate a group of Apanteles species with a sinuated vein cu-a in the hind wing, a character he interpreted as plesiomorphic among Microgastrinae. Fernández-Triana et al. (2013) also considered the presence of a median longitudinal carina on the propodeum (or the secondary loss of that carina, which occurs in some Palaeartic species but not in the New World ones) as a strong support for its generic status. DNA barcoding tends to clearly cluster the species of Iconella and Apanteles separately (e.g. Fernández-Triana et al. 2013; Smith et al. 2013).

Iconella includes all species of Nixon’s sundanus-group and part of the merula-group (Nixon 1965, Whitfield 1997). It is cosmopolitan, with 36 described species, most of them found in the Palearctic (Yu et al. 2012; Fernández-Triana et al. 2013). All species with known hosts are solitary parasitoids of microlepidoptera, especially concealed feeders (Whitfield 1997); Iconella isolata (Muesebeck, 1955) has been extensively studied in the tropics for biological control of a pest caterpillar (e.g. Bennett 1960, Bartlett et al. 1978).