The Wharton Lab

Physotarsus adriani Gauld, 1997: 194–195. Holotype female in INBio.
Physotarsus adriani: Yu and Horstmann 1997: 455 (catalog); Zhaurova and Wharton 2009: 9-12 (redescription, inclusion in key to species).

Lateral ocelli separated by 0.4–0.6X their widest diameter from each other and about 1.8–2.1X their widest diameter from eye margin. Antenna with 30–32 flagellomeres. Pronotum and mesoscutum glabrous, impunctate. T1 about twice as long as broad. Head brownish orange, face mostly brown. Mesosoma and metasoma orange. Hind legs orange, tarsomeres distally infuscate. Fore wing very strongly yellowish proximally, blackish infumate distally.

Physotarsus adriani is readily recognized by the distinctive color pattern of the fore wing (very strongly yellowish proximally, blackish infumate distally), matched only in P. castilloi. The two are distinguished by color differences noted by Gauld (1997), and in the shape of the ventral margin of the clypeus which is not as strongly protruding in P. adriani. In P. adriani, the frons and first tarsomere of the hind leg are orange, whereas both are black in P. castilloi.

Known only from the seasonal dry forest of northwestern Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica.

Several specimens of P. adriani were reared from cocoons of the argid sawfly Trochophora lobata in Costa Rica (Gauld 1997; Janzen 2006). This is the only known host record for the genus.

Material Examined. Paratypes: 6 females, 1 male, COSTA RICA: Guanacaste Prov., Santa Rosa National Park, 300 m, 13.vi.1976 & 10.vi–1.vii.1977 (Janzen) (AEIC); 3 females, Guanacaste National Park, Finca Jenny, vi.1990 (INBio).

This page was assembled by Bob Wharton and Kira Zhaurova, and is part of a revision of the genus Physotarsus (Zhaurova and Wharton 2009). Material examined for this revision was borrowed from the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, the American Entomological Institute, Gainesville (AEIC), The Natural History Museum, London, the U. S. National Museum of Natural History, and INBio, Costa Rica. We thank David Wahl, Ian Gauld, and Ronald Zúñiga for the extended loan of the specimens listed above. We are particularly grateful to Matt Yoder for the electronic interface and to Heather Cummins and Mika Cameron for assistance with literature and figures. We would also like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Ian Gauld, David Wahl, Andrew Bennett, and Gavin Broad for information exchange about ichneumonids during the course of this work. Our use of PURLs (http://purl.oclc.org) for the web interface follows the example of their use in publications by Norm Johnson. The work was conducted at Texas A&M University and supported by NSF/PEET grant no. DEB 0328922 and associated REU supplement # 0723663. Page last updated October 2010.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DEB 0328922 with REU supplement DEB 0723663.
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.