Supporting the Encyclopedia of Life

For the past ten days I have not been able to add more posts to the blog. I do not have any particular "quota" of posts-per-time to fulfill; this blog is a volunteer effort that I do from home in the evenings, and the frequency varies according to my available time. However, ideally I would like to have 4-5 posts/month (about one post/week).

One of the reasons I am a bit delayed is because of spending some time changing the formatting of the blog. [Thanks to my 12 years-old daughter, she convinced me that my sense of style is pathetic, and so I was kind of forced "to improve" the presentation of the blog according to her much better aesthetic opinions].

But the main reason is that I have been exploring ways to contribute contents to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). This was always part of my intentions when starting the blog. Many more people go to EOL to look for information about living things than they would ever come to this blog -and rightly so! Thus, it made complete sense for me to (try to) make available information about braconid wasps to as many users as possible. On top of that, EOL has few contents about Braconidae -and especially very few pages about microgastrine wasps. Even the name applied to the subfamily (Microgasterinae) is not the named currently used and accepted (Microgastrinae). See below a copy of that EOL page:

A braconid wasp in the COSEWIC List?

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) exists to provide Canadians and their governments with advice regarding the status of wildlife species that are nationally at risk of extinction or extirpation. Its committee of experts assesses and designates which wildlife species are in some danger of disappearing from the national territory. As part of  its work, COSEWIC produces a Candidate List of species. I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the protection of the Canadian nature to visit the COSEWIC website, and to support their work and that of similar organizations. [Disclaimer: I do not work for COSEWIC, nor I am involved with their efforts in any capacity].

My interest in COSEWIC, and the reason I am writing this post today is to discuss the POSSIBILITY of including a parasitoid Braconidae wasp within their list. Is that a real thing? Or am I just getting too excited with my subject of research?

Let's look at the facts and try to be impartial. COSEWIC List includes quite a few arthropods species. Which in itself is something truly amazing, especially in this world that usually focus its conservation efforts in large, charismatic fauna -conservation efforts also prioritize the flora, but I will leave plants out of this comment and will restrict myself to animals for the time being. 

Small animals, like insects, tend to be almost completely overlooked... unless they are "charismatic" by themselves, e.g. a beautiful butterfly, a conspicuous bumble bee, a colorful ground beetle, a large dragon fly, etc. But a small parasitoid wasp (2.5 mm long)... are you kidding me? Who cares about THAT?

Well, as they say "no harm in trying", and I am trying today to present the case for a first parasitoid wasp to be considered by COSEWIC: the microgastrine species Apanteles samarshalli Fernández-Triana, 2010.

The species was described very recently, in 2010, from specimens found mostly in southern Florida, United States (Everglades and the Florida Keys). I have also found additional specimens in two countries of Central America (data from unpublished studies). 

But, the original description also recorded the species from one Canadian locality: Rondeau Provincial Park, in southwestern Ontario. Rondeau truly honours its reputation of having species commonly found at much southern latitudes, because the single specimen collected there (in August of 1973, and deposited in the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Ottawa) happens to be, by far, the northernmost known for the species.

Open for business: Apanteles fumiferanae

The microgastrine wasp Apanteles fumiferanae Viereck is one the most important Braconidae -as forest pest management concerns- in North America. Based on specimens available in collections, it is the most common braconid parasitoid reared from the spruce budworm Choristoneura fumiferanae (Harris) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which in turn is one of the major forest pests in the region.

Very few pests rival the spruce budworm in importance, and thus this lepidopteran species has been extensively studied over the years. There are hundreds of papers covering details of its biology, ecology, damage and control (biological, chemical, integrated). As part of those studies, for many years its caterpillars have been collected and reared for parasitoids, providing perhaps the best information ever available for a single forest pest in the Neartic. And still there are many details to be researched and understood!

Some recent papers summarize what we know until now. For example, an excellent analysis of the complex relationships between the spruce budworm and its parasitoids/hyperparasitoids/pathogens, was published by Eldon Eveleigh (Canadian Forest Service, CFS) and ten co-authors in 2007; it can be freely downloaded here. Reading that paper will open anyone eyes regarding the complexities of the food webs in a temperate forest. I especially recommend to check Figure 1 of that paper (which is not for the faint of heart!). One can only image similar analysis for a tropical forest... it is just mind boggling.

From a parasitoid perspective, John Huber, also from the CFS, led a team of four taxonomists to produce a series of papers covering all major groups of parasitoids of the genus Choristoneura in the Nearctic region: chalcid wasps (Huber, 1996), tachinid flies (O'Hara, 2005), ichneumonid wasps (Bennett, 2008) and braconid wasps (Fernández-Triana and Huber, 2010). Those works provided numerous illustrations, keys, and taxonomic notes to help identifying the large fauna of currently known parasitoids (230 species within 106 genera and 13 different families; see figures 155-157 and Discussion in Fernández-Triana and Huber (2010). [Unfortunately those papers can be downloaded for free, except for their Abstracts. However, being one of the authors of the braconid paper, I have plenty of reprints for that one, and would be pleased to send copies to anyone interested].

Which bring us back to the topic of this post: Apanteles fumiferanae. The species is widely distributed in the Nearctic region (there is also a record from Poland, but that might be incorrect). It has been reared from caterpillars of 17 lepidopteran species representing 4 families (although some of those early records, from historical references, are likely to be wrong). Close to one hundred scientific papers have dealt with that wasp species, and there is reason to believe more are needed... Why? Because A. fumiferanae actually comprises a complex of morphologically cryptic species (i.e. species that cannot be easily separate based on external morphology, yet are distinct biological entities).

Numbers matter

This week I was talking to my colleague Caroline Boudreault about the numbers of Braconidae specimens, species, and primary types that we currently have in Ottawa (Canadian National Collection of Insects, CNC). Caroline, an extremely skillful and knowledgeable person when it comes to braconids, had been asked to revise and update the number of primary types here.  

Primary types (i.e. holotypes, syntypes, lectotypes, and neotypes, as defined by Articles 73-75 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) are usually one of the main factors considered when evaluating the weight of a collection. The more the types, the higher a collection is ranked. Because primary types are name-bearing specimens. 

So, how good is the CNC in terms of Braconidae types? According to Taxapad, there are almost 300 institutions worldwide storing primary type material of braconid wasps, altogether representing 20,007 type specimens. And, according to that source, Ottawa is the 5th largest collection in the world, with 683 types (see pie chart below).

Number of primary types (mostly holotypes) stored in 272 collections of Braconidae worldwide (after Taxapad, 2012).

When Caroline added some new data that is not yet in Taxapad, the number rose to more than 720. And then we will be incorporating over 200 new holotypes within the next couple of months (I will write about that development in a future post). Thus, in round numbers, the CNC collection of Braconidae is approaching the one-thousand-types mark. 

Of course, beyond the number of primary types it is also important to know the number of specimens overall, the geographic coverage of the collection per se, and its curation state. We do not know those figures with the same precision as for the types, but below I share what have found out so far.

There are almost 60 cabinets, each with 29 drawers, for a total of over 1,600 drawers with braconid wasps in the CNC (a previous summary mentioned 1,500 drawers of Braconidae, but that number has increased steadily in the past two years). Based on that, and on a conservative average number of specimens/drawer,  my tentative estimate would be around half million of specimens. And that only represents the mounted/pined material; there is a huge collection in alcohol (several thousand vials, as mentioned here), where many more thousands specimens await to be processed and incorporated to the main (dry) collection.

An elusive genus from the Old World Tropics

While the main emphasis of this blog is on Nearctic braconid wasps attacking caterpillars, from time to time it is nice to expand the geographic coverage. Especially when new information about uncommon species is available to be shared. In this post I will be commenting on the genus Neoclarkinella, described from India in 1996 by Rema and Narendran.

Currently that genus of Microgastrinae comprises three species, two from India and one from China. Those species have been described within the last 20 years or so, and the information on them is extremely scarce, with just seven papers in the scientific literature referring to Neoclarkinella. 

However, the genus is actually quite diverse and spread in the Old World tropics, especially Southeast Asia. In the Canadian National Collection, Ottawa (CNC), I have mounted and studied many specimens (mostly from Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, China, etc.), representing at least two dozen undescribed species. Many CNC specimens have also been sampled for DNA (CO1 gene) and the resulting barcodes were made freely available recently (in a paper I mentioned in a recent post).

Undescribed species of Neoclarkinella from Thailand, deposited in the CNC (Ottawa), with collection code CNCH2006.

Canadian Microgastrinae described by L. A. Provancher. Part II

This is the second part of a work about Canadian species of Microgastrinae described by Provancher in the XIX century. In all cases, the photos shown are the first ever to be taken to those holotypes, and are now available for anyone interested and/or working with the group. More information on the Provancher species will be soon made available through this blog and other websites.

Microplitis quadridentatus (Provancher, 1886). The original name given to the species was Microgaster 4-dentatus. Its known distribution is mostly Northeastern United States and Ontario, although it has also been recorded from South Dakota -suggesting a likely wider distribution in North America. It has been reared from two species of the Noctuid genus Simyra. 

Opportunities of DNA barcoding for taxonomists

A few days ago a paper I co-authored came out in Molecular Ecology Resources. That paper is of relevance to this blog because it releases over 20,000 DNA sequences (gene CO1) from over 2,000 species and 50 genera of Microgastrinae braconid wasps, collected in over 75 countries. The number of sequences made available for free use of the scientific community and the general public it is likely one of the highest ever released. It speaks volumes of the efforts made by the International Barcode of Life or iBOL (among many other institutions, partnerships and initiatives) that are promoting the use of DNA barcoding to help cataloging, studying and describing the amazing diversity of life in this planet. [For those interested in more information about DNA barcoding, there are many resources online to look at, probably an easy way is to just start browsing the iBOL website and related sites mentioned there. Suffice to say that DNA barcoding has many practical applications, but for this post I will only focus on its potential for taxonomists working with parasitoid wasps].

The sequences we are talking about today were amassed during the last eight years and they represent the effort of many scientists and institutions -that explains the long chain of authors being part of the paper. The resources can be accessed using BOLD (The Barcode of Life Data Systems) a magnificent online resource designed to support the generation and application of DNA barcode data.

A view of the BOLD website with summarized information about microgastrinae wasps. Accessed on December 21, 2012. For a larger view and more information on the group click here.

Back to the paper mentioned, it not only releases a significant amount of data, but it also provides suggestions on how to use it in the near future. For example, we considered the sequences to be important in efforts related to: 1) Discovery of cryptic species and description of new taxa; 2) Estimating species numbers in biodiversity inventories; 3) Clarification of generic boundaries within Microgastrinae; 4) Biological control programmes; 5) Molecular studies of host-parasitoid biology and ecology; 6) Evaluation of shifts in species distribution and phenology; and (7) Fostering collaboration at national, regional and world levels. 

All of the above mentioned points are relevant to this blog -and are indeed relevant to biocontrol workers, biodiversity researchers, taxonomists, etc. What is more important: many specimens mentioned in the paper actually come from Canada (~6,000 specimens), or from related areas in the Nearctic or Palearctic regions (+3,000). And that will allow us to advance researches in a way that would not have been possible in the past, before the arrival of DNA barcoding.

Braconid wasps and forest pests in Canada

In a previous post, I analyzed some interesting data coming from the Canadian Forest Pest Management Forum. I could find at least 119 species within 20 families of caterpillars (Lepidoptera) that have been mentioned as pests of some kind to our forests in the past few years. As a taxonomist working with braconid wasps, my next logical step was then to see how many parasitoid species have been recorded out of those 119 lepidopterans.

For such a compilation I used the great resource that is Taxapad. [I have mentioned previously what Taxapad is, and promise that will dedicate a future post to that magnificent database maintained by Dicky Yu (Canada), Cornelis van Achterberg (The Netherlands) and Klaus Horstmann (Germany). Suffice to say for now that Taxapad should be considered as a key tool by many biologists and entomologists, especially those working in biocontrol].

Altogether, 299 species of Braconidae have been found, worldwide, attacking those pest caterpillars. I stress here the world "worldwide" in the sense that those records go beyond Canada to include ANY braconid wasp that has been cited in the scientific literature as a parasitoid of those lepidopterans. It is difficult and very time consuming to separate the sources of information for each individual species and pinpoint the country source. And it is even more difficult to be sure about the certainty of some of those records -some are likely to be wrong for a number of causes. Still, they give us a kind of ballpark estimate about the diversity of parasitoids of forest pest caterpillars. So, for the purpose of this post we can take the worldwide totals as a first approximation to the story of what is going on in Canada.

The first thing that becomes clear is how few we know about the parasitoid of those forest pests. Surely that 299 braconids sounds like an awfully large number of wasps, but the numbers are misleading (see the graph below). Because for 40 (33.6%) of those caterpillar species there is ZERO braconid wasps recorded as parasitoids. That means one third of the caterpillars where we know NOTHING of its parasitoid biology. For another 31 species of lepidopterans (26%) we only know one or two species of braconid parasitoids.

Braconidae species (299) recorded as parasitoids of 119 pests caterpillars of some relevance to Canadian forests. Data source mostly from Taxapad (2012). The numbers on top of each bar represent the actual number of braconids in each category.


On the other side of the spectrum, we have recorded 30 or more braconid parasitoids for 4 species of caterpillars. They represent important pests (such as the spruce budworm or the gipsy moth) which at some point have been the focus of serious rearing efforts from biocontrol workers, resulting in hundreds of research papers. If anything, that should be the example to follow with other pest species that are important as well. 

Canadian Microgastrinae described by L. A. Provancher. Part I

One of the main reasons to have this blog is to share new information on species of Canadian Braconidae which may interest biocontrol workers. That includes photos, descriptions, new distribution and host records, etc. The idea is to prepare "Species Profiles" for as many braconids as possible, in time creating a library that might be freely consulted and used by interested researchers.

I am still trying to deposit the photos in the website of the Canadian National Collections of Insects (CNC), to be able to provide high resolution images and distribution maps. But there are some technical details to be sorted out, and thus I have decided to start posting that info in the blog for the time being. As soon as the Species Profiles can be uploaded in the CNC website I will let the readers know.

Today I am sharing colour pictures of the holotypes of three Microgastrinae species described by León Abel Provancher in the 1880's. The specimens are deposited in the Collections de l'Université Laval, Sainte-Foy, Québec; where many specimens collected by Provancher are well kept and preserved. I thank Gisèle Wagner and Jean-Marie Perron for kindly loaning the specimens. I am also very much indebted to Dicky Yu (CNC) for his extraordinary work compiling the information that makes Taxapad (all distribution and host records provided below are from Taxapad, although I plan to increase that by adding later new information from specimens deposited in the CNC). 

Cotesia acauda (Provancher, 1886). Originally described as "Microgaster acaudus", it is now placed in the genus Cotesia. The head of the female holotype is missing  but otherwise the specimen is in relatively good condition. The species is distributed in eastern North America (Canada: Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec; U.S.A: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin). It has been reared from two lepidopteran species of the Family Geometridae: Rheumaptera prunivorata and R. undulata.

Forest Pest Management Forum

This week Ottawa hosted, once again, the Forest Pest Management Forum. This is an annual meeting where people from all over Canada (and a few from the United States) gather together to share updated information about forestry pests and its management in the country. 

I have never been to those meetings, but this year a good friend and colleague, Dr. John Huber, from the Canadian Forestry Service and the Canadian National Collection of Insects (CNC) in Ottawa, suggested me to attend. And I was seriously planning to go when some unexpected complications at work prevented me to do it. 

As a "consolation prize" I ended checking the website of the meeting to at least have a sense of what was going on there. First I found a nice compilation of pdf files with the proceedings of past meetings. Anyone interested in the topics of Entomology, Forestry and Pest Management should take the time and revise that valuable source of data. There are tons of information there. One of the most interesting, in my humble opinion, is to see the historical pattern of pests, within the country and in individual provinces. You can follow the evolution of different pest problems that Canadian forests have experienced during the past years by just reading those proceedings.

I went back only seven years, up to the proceedings of the 2005 meeting. But found quite a few interesting details, and this post is to share what I found about Lepidoptera pests.

First of all, I could compile a list of 119 species and 20 families of Lepidoptera caterpillars that have been considered forestry pests in Canada (see detailed list at the end of this post).  Half of all species belong to just two families: Geometridae (27%) and Tortricidaae (26%), and seven families account for three quarters of the species.

Lepidoptera considered as pest of Canadian forests (grand total: 119 species and 20 families). For an explanation of the data sources, see detailed list of species added at the end of this post.

Of course, most of those species are of low significance and cause minor affectations to forestry (or the damage is just too sporadic or too sparse to consider them of real importance). Actually less than a dozen species can be considered as serious pests. Still, this grand total of 119 species should remind us of how quickly things can go wrong with an insect pest. Unfortunately, the next "new pest" outbreak might be just around the corner...