Biodiversity Data Journal :
Taxonomic paper
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Corresponding author:
Academic editor: Michael S. Engel
Received: 02 Aug 2015 | Accepted: 28 Aug 2015 | Published: 31 Aug 2015
© 2015 Michael Skvarla, Amber Tripodi, Allen Szalanski, Ashley Dowling
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Skvarla M, Tripodi A, Szalanski A, Dowling A (2015) New records of Orussus minutus Middlekauff, 1983 (Hymenoptera: Orussidae) represent a significant western range expansion. Biodiversity Data Journal 3: e5793. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.3.e5793
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Orussus minutus is an uncommonly collected parasitoid sawfly known from the eastern United States.
We report specimens Orussus minutus Middlekauff, 1983, from Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Manitoba, which represent new state and province records and significantly expand the known range of the species west from previous records; provide collection information for unpublished specimens housed in the United States National Museum collection, which includes new state records for West Virginia and Michigan; and report two specimens housed in the Biological Museum at Lund University that represent new state records for Connecticut.
Symphyta, Range expansion, Buffalo National River, new state record
Orussidae have long interested entomologists because of their parasitoid larvae, which are unique among non-apocritan Hymenoptera, phylogenetically important position between basal Hymenoptera ("Symphyta") and Apocrita, and because they are rarely collected (
Host family |
Reference |
Buprestidae |
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Cerambycidae |
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Siricidae |
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Xiphydriidae |
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Orussidae are uncommonly collected and rare in collections. For example, despite a cumulative 25,000 trapping hours (314 separate 1–2 week collection events) using Malaise traps over the last five years by the authors around Arkansas, no additional specimens beyond the three reported herein were captured with this trapping method and David Smith (USDA, SEL), who has had success collecting orussids in Malaise traps (e.g.,
Orussus is represented five species in North America north of Mexico: O. occidentalis (Cresson, 1879) has been reported from Southern British Columbia east to Ontario, south in the western United States to southern California, Nevada, and New Mexico; O. thoracicus (Ashmead, 1898) has been reported from Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California; O. sayii (Westwood, 1835) has been reported from Ontario south to Louisiana, west to Indiana; O. terminalis (Newman, 1838) has been reported from New England and Ontario west to Iowa and Illinois, south to Maryland; and O. minutus (Middlekauff, 1983) has been reported from New York to Georgia west to Illinois (
Two orussids (1 male, 1 female) were collected along the Buffalo National River in the lower collector of an aerial SLAM (sea-land-air-Malaise) trap (MegaView Science Co., Ltd., Taichung, Taiwan) and a black multifunnel trap (ChemTica International, S.A., Heredia, Costa Rica); a third specimen (1 female) was collected via aerial netting in the Kessler Mountain Reserve. Both localities are mixed secondary deciduous forest dominated by oak and hickory that were logged approximately 80–100 years ago. Specimens were identified to species using published keys (
Stereomicrographs of the Arkansas specimens were taken with a Cannon EOS 40D camera (Tokyo, Japan) attached using a Diagnostic Instruments DD20NLT 2.0X camera mount (Sterling Heights, Michigan, USA) to a Nikon SMZ1500 stereomicroscope (Tokyo, Japan). The microgrpahs were processed and final plates arranged in Adobe Illustrator (San Jose, California, USA).
DNA of one Arkansas specimen (MS 13-0413-047, #138295) was sequenced for comparison with previously characterized Orussus. Genomic DNA was extracted from a single mid-leg using the Qiagen DNeasy Tissue kit (Qiagen, Inc., Valencia, California), following manufacturer’s instructions. PCR was conducted using the primers LR-J-13017 (5’- TTACGCTGTTATCCTAA-3’) and LR-N-13398 (5’- CACCTGTTTAACAAAAACAT-3’) (
David R. Smith kindly provided label information for specimens housed in the United States National Museum; previously unpublished specimens are reported herein. Additional unpublished specimens were found by searching the databased collection of Lund University Biological Museum (
Published locality data for Figure 3 was compiled from
Institution abbreviations follow
New York south to Georgia west to Manitoba, Iowa, and Arkansas.
The Arkansas specimens and those shared as photographs on Bugguide and Flickr significantly expand the known range of O. minutus westward (Fig.
Many of the USNM specimens were collected by David R. Smith during 35 years of Malaise trapping specifically for sawflies. However, most recently collected specimens, especially those from Pennsylvania, were found as non-target species during various exotic species monitoring programs that utalized Lindgren multifunnel traps (David Smith, pers. comm., 28 Aug. 2015). The abundance of these specimens emphasize the utility of examining, or at least collecting and sending to the appropriate specialist, non-target species in mass trapping surveys, such as was suggested by
Given the current records, O. minutus is likely present throughout most of Eastern North America. The concentration of specimens from northern Virginia and Pennsylvania reflect collecting effort and specimen recoginition rather than true abundance and further collecting in the southeastern United States and Canada should produce additional specimens from those areas.
Finally, records found through Bugguide and Flickr join a growing list of discoveries made via citizen science and social media websites (e.g.,
We thank David Smith for providing the collection data for the USNM specimens and his willingness and enthusiasm to discuss sawflies; Christer Hansson for providing the collection data for the MZLU specimens and Lund University for digitizing their collection; Danielle Fisher for her assistance in sorting trap material and finding the first specimen; Clinton Trammel for laboratory assistance; and Lars Vilhelmsen, Stephen Blank, and Andy Deans for their helpful comments and corrections. This project and the preparation of this publication was funded in part by the State Wildlife Grants Program (Grant # T39-05) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through an agreement with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.