The Wharton Lab

Bathystomus Foerster, 1862: 235. Type species: Bathystomus xanthopus Foerster, 1862 (monobasic and original designation).

Type locality: Germany, Aachen; Lectotype male in Museum fuer Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universitaet, Berlin.

Status unsettled. Usually treated as a synonym of Diachasma (Fischer 1972, Yu et al. 2012, and Shirley et al. 2014) or as subgenus of Opius (Wharton 1988: 355), but also as a separate genus (Wharton 1993: 109 and van Achterberg 2014: 208).

See the Diachasma page. Wharton (1988) provided specific morphological details for differentiating Bathystomus from Diachasma and Atoreuteus. Atoreuteus, for example, has an almost continuous curve between the polished labrum and the underside of the clypeus whereas the labrum and clypeus form a more distinct angle in Bathystomus. As in Diachasma. the second submarginal cell of the fore wing is relatively small (Fig. 3) and the labrum is broadly exposed but unlike the type species of Diachasma, the pronotum dorsally has a very large, median pit (pronope) in both Bathystomus and Atoreuteus.

The type species of Bathystomus is very distinctive and can be readily recognized by the shape of the scuto-scutellar sulcus and adjacent sclerites. The sulcus is large and curved, with the lateral ends directed posteriorly. In other opiines, the scuto-scutellar sulcus, which may be narrow or broad, is nearly always straight (transverse). Additionally, the mesoscutum has a large midpit, the precoxal sulcus is absent or nearly so, the metasoma is compressed in the female, and without sculpture on T2 and T3. Also, as noted above, the pronotum dorsally had a large median pit (pronope).

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 June, 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.