'Soliga ecarinata': Meet the new wasp genus

Researchers have unearthed a "strikingly colourful" new genus of wasp from the forests of Biligiri Rangana Hills in Karnataka and other locations.

Discovered by entomologists of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), the wasp has been named 'Soliga ecarinata' after the indigenous community that resides in BR Hills and Male Mahadeshwara Hills in Chamarajanagar.

The wasp belongs to the subfamily Metopiinae of the Darwin wasps family Ichneumonidae, ATREE said on Sunday.

The collections were made from dry, deciduous forests of the Western Ghats and a secondary wet forest of the northeast Himalayas. ATREE said the new genus is the second of this subfamily reported from India and the first from south India.

The discovery, recorded by researchers Ranjith A P and Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan, was published in the European Journal of Taxonomy.

“The initial work was done as part of the Western Ghats Insect Inventory Programme by ATREE. The specimens were collected 15 years ago. During a recent expedition, more specimens of the species were collected from Nagaland,” Priyadarsanan, senior author of the discovery, told DH.

Metopiinae has 862 species across 27 genera, most of which are seen only in the Palaearctic, Neotropical, and Nearctic regions.

The species’ name ‘ecarinata’ denotes the absence of ridges in some of its body regions. The entomologists described the insect as “strikingly colourful and distinct from all its relatives”.

Most of the Metopiinae species with known biology have been identified as parasitoids of the caterpillars of moths and butterflies and are potentially effective as biological control agents against insect pests.

Priyadarsanan said the naming of the wasp is in acknowledgment of the Soligas’ sustainability practices carried over generations and the community’s efforts in conserving the BRT Wildlife Sanctuary.

Apart from several hundred species of plants, 120 species of ants, 120 species of butterflies, and 105 species of dung beetles are known from the sanctuary, ATREE said in a statement on Sunday.

Of the 40 new species of insects described by ATREE entomologists in the last year, 10 are from BRT.