Dr Serguei Triapitsyn from the University of California Riverside’s Entomology Research Museum has identified 19 new species in the mymarid wasp genus Gonatocerus, and named one of them Gonatocerus ucri after the university commonly abbreviated as UCR.
Gonatocerus ucri, named after University of California Riverside (Entomology Research Museum, UC Riversde)
Description of the newly discovered species, including Gonatocerus ucri, appears in a monograph published in Zootaxa. It took the scientist several years to complete their description, since identification of these minute wasps (1.1 to 1.2 mm in body length) requires special preparation.
Gonatocerus ucri is mostly brown in color and has long antennae and wings. Its host is unknown but other species in the same genus are beneficial insects known to parasitize eggs of leafhoppers, some of which are economically important agricultural pests worldwide.
“I decided to name it after UCR because that’s where I work,” Dr Triapitsyn explained.
Specimens of Gonatocerus ucri were collected in a remote location in Primorsky Kray, Russia, a region that has a largely unknown and very rich fauna of this group of insects.
“The UCR Entomology Research Museum has extensive collections of parasitoid wasps from throughout the world, and I routinely discover new species among the collected material.”
“I will soon also be describing another new species, this one from southern California, and name it after the Entomology Research Museum.”
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Bibliographic information: Serguei V. Triapitsyn. 2013. Review of Gonatocerus (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae) in the Palaearctic region, with notes on extralimital distributions. Zootaxa 3644 (1): 1–178
