Entomologists of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment have discovered a new species of wasp in the Western Ghat region of Karnataka.
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The new species is Taeniogonalos deepaki, named after the medical doctor and nature enthusiast Deepak Deshpande who collected the specimen.
The new species, Taeniogonalos deepaki, was discovered in the Belgaum region and a release said that in the world of insects some have a unique way of growing up—they need to live inside another and they are called parasitoids. Among them, there’s a group called hyperparasitoids and they are akin to spies of the insect world because they sneak into other parasitoids. Trigonalyidae are these types of insects, said the release.
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The study was conducted by Femi Ezhuthupallickal Benny, A.P. Ranjith, and Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan, scientists of ATREE Bengaluru and has been published in the latest issue of the international journal Zootaxa, the release added.
In all, seven Taeniogonalos species have been reported from India so far including Taeniogonalos deepaki. The paper also includes the first male description of Taeniogonalos eurysoma whose female was described in 2020 from China and male was unknown till now. The male of Taeniogonalos eurysoma was collected from Arunachal Pradesh by A.P. Ranjith, said the release.
“There is an urgent need for more extensive taxonomic studies on the family, which can potentially lead to the discovery of many more species” - said the team members involved in the study.