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Two New Scelionid Parasites of Locusta migratoria, L., from Russia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2009
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This summer I received for identification from the Entomological Department of the Experimental Station at Poltava one vial with 12 specimens (2 ♂♂, 10 ♀♀) of a new species of Scelio bred from eggs of Locusta migratoria ph. danica, collected by F. Lukjanovich, 12.viii.1925, at Priluky, Poltava province ; and later on Mr. B. P. Uvarov sent me two females of another species from Turkestan. All the representatives of the cosmopolitan genus Scelio, Latr., so far as we know, are egg-parasites of Acrididae. Some species have been bred from L. danica in Australia, but in Europe this is the first species of which the host has been recorded. Dr. J. J. Kieffer, in a posthumous monograph of the Scelionidae (Das Tierreich, Lief. 48, 1926), among other generic characters mentioned the four-jointed maxillary palpi. He further distinguished the Australian genus Neoscelio, Dodd, from Scelio by its having three-jointed maxillary palpi, besides the long metathoracic spine. Unfortunately Kieffer did not mention to which species of the genus Scelio his observation referred. I have dissected a few specimens of three species, S. vulgaris, Kieff., S. uvarovi, sp. n., and S. nikolskyi, sp. n., and can state that in both sexes of all these species the maxillary palpi are only three-jointed. The generic definition of the genus Scelio must therefore be corrected in this sense.
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