The Wharton Lab

Orientopius Fischer, 1966: 147. Type species: Orientopius curiosigaster Fischer, 1966 (original designation).

Type locality of type species: Philippines, near Baguio. Holotype male in American Entomological Institute.

First treated as a genus (Fischer 1966, 1972, 1987); later as a subgenus of Opius (Wharton 1988) and revived as a genus by van Achterberg et al. (2012).

Orientopius was included in a key to the genera of Opiini in 1965 (Fischer 1965: 310), but since a type species was not designated until the 1966 publication, the genus name was essentially a nomen nudum until 1966.

The genus was revised by van Achterberg et al. (2012), who offered a slightly different interpretation than Wharton (1988) relative to relationships with and the validity of Coleopius.

Orientopius has wing venation (with short second submarginal cell) and a carapace-like metasoma similar to the species of Bitomus, Bitomoides, and especially Coleopius. As in Bitomus, a mesoscutal midpit is well-developed in Orientopius but Bitomus differs from Orientopius and these other two genera by having the labrum concealed by the large clypeus with median tooth on the ventral margin. In the type species of all of these genera, the notauli and precoxal sulci are long and sculptured. See the Bitomus page for some additional characters worthy of note for this group of genera.

Metasomal terga 4 and following are exposed in the holotype male of the type species of Orientopius. This character, unfortunately, is somewhat subject to method of preparation and postmortem changes, and, as noted by van Achterberg et al. (2012), is often gender-dependent. Unfortunately, the type species of Orientopius is known only from the male (as of 2015).

The relatively recently described Coleopioides van Achterberg and Li, 2013 (Li et al. 2013) differs from these other four genera primarily because of the longer second submarginal cell. This is a bit subjective, however, since the second submarginal cell is longer in the type species of Bitomus than it is in the type species of Bitomoides, Coleopius, and Orientopius but shorter than in the type species of Coleopioides. Metasomal tergite 3 is also about as long as tergite 2 in Coleopioides and Bitomus but T3 is shorter than T2 in the other three genera.

One species has been reared from Phytobia (Agromyzidae) (van Achterberg et al. 2012).

This page was assembled by Bob Wharton and Danielle Restuccia. It is part of a review of the genera of World Opiinae, conducted at Texas A&M University. We are particularly grateful to Xanthe Shirley, Andrew Ly, Patricia Mullins, Trent Hawkins, Lauren Ward, Cheryl Hyde, Karl Roeder, and Andrea Walker, who did nearly all of the imaging (together with Danielle) for this project. Matt Yoder and Istvan Miko provided guidance on databasing issues associated with our use of mx and HAO respectively. This project would not have been possible without the kindness of many curators at museums throughout the world who gave generously of their time to Bob Wharton and his students. In particular, I thank Henry Townes (deceased) and David Wahl (American Entomological Institute, Gainesville), Gordon Nishida (Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu), Norm Penny, and Bob Zuparko (California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco), Bill Mason (deceased), Mike Sharkey, Andrew Bennett, and Henri Goulet (Canadian National Collection, Ottawa), Paul Dessart (deceased) (Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, Brussels), Marc De Meyer (Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika, Tervuren), Axel Bachmann (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Natureles, Buenos Aires), Eberhard Koenigsmann (deceased) and Frank Koch (Museum fuer Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universitaet, Berlin), J. Casevitz Weulersse and Claire Villemant (Museum National d’Historie Naturelle, Paris), James O’Connor (National Museum of Ireland, Dublin), Jenö Papp (National Museum of Natural History, Budapest), Kees van Achterberg (National Museum of Natural History, Leiden), Max Fischer, Herb Zettel, and Dominique Zimmermann (Naturhistorisches Museum, Wien), Per Persson and Lars-Åke Janzon (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, Stockholm), Ermenegildo Tremblay (Silvestri Collection, Portici), Erasmus Haeselbarth (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, Munich), Tom Huddleston and Gavin Broad (The Natural History Museum, London), Paul Marsh and Robert Kula (USDA Systematic Research Laboratory and US National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D. C.), Vladimir Tobias (deceased) and Sergey Belokobylskij (Zoological Institute, Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg), and Roy Danielsson (Zoological Institute, Department of Systematics, Lund) for facilitating loans and general assistance associated with examination of holotypes and other material in their care. This work was supported largely by NSF/PEET DEB 0328922 and 0949027, with REU supplements 0723663, 1026618, 1213790, and 1313933 (to Wharton). Page last updated July, 2015. The material on this page is freely available, but should be acknowledged if used elsewhere.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers DEB 9300517, DEB (PEET) 9712543, DEB (PEET) 0328922 with REU supplements 0723663 and 1026618 and DEB 0949027 with REU supplements 1213790 and 1313933. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.