DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF THE GENUS METEORUS HALIDAY (HYMENOPTERA: BRACONIDAE: METEORINAE) WITH A KEY TOKNOWN INDIAN SPECIES

摘要

In a classical biological control program, insect parasitoids play an important role in reducing population of insect pests of different agricultural crops. The term "parasitoid" describes the strategy in which during its development, the parasite lives in or on the body of a single host individual, eventually killing that host, but the adult parasitoids are free-living. In present study a survey was conducted to collect euphorine and meteorine parasitoids of family Braconidae from different agricultural crops in and around Aligarh. The family Braconidae contains species which are exclusively parasitoids of various pest species mainly belonging to the Lepidoptera and also of other insect orders. These parasitoids are of great economic importance, for example, species of Microctonus Wesmael, Leiophron Nees, Peristenus Foerster and Meteorus Haliday have been used in the biological control programmes against such pests as gypsy moth, the alfalfa weevil, lygus plant bugs and brown tail moth respectively. In this paper a new species of the braconid genus Meteorus Haliday, viz., M. aligarhensis Shamim sp. nov. is described and illustrated from India and a key to the Indian species is also given.