Analysis of morphological variation and description of fifteen new species of the genus Centistes Haliday (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Euphorinae: Centistini) with a key of the South American species

The cosmopolitan family Braconidae is found in a wide range of habitats despite being composed by highly specialized parasitoids. The genus Centistes includes a total of 97 described species, distributed in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. However, for the Americas there is just a recent revision of the Costa Rican fauna, with the description of twenty-three new species, but there has not been a comprehensive work about the genus for mainland South America.

In this work, we studied the variation and richness of the genus through analyses of discrete characters, linear morphometry, ratio analyses, and geometric morphometrics. A key for the known South American species is provided and 15 new species are described: C. bellus Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. grandis Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. helmuthi Shaw sp. nov., C. hemicirculus Román & Sarmiento sp. nov., C. hexagonalis Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. iguaquensis Román & Sarmiento sp. nov., C. itamontiensis Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. itatiaiaensis Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. lobungula Román & Sarmiento sp. nov., C. rosae Román & Sarmiento sp. nov., C. singularis Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. soaresi Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov., C. succinum Román & Sarmiento sp. nov., C. truncatus Román & Sarmiento sp. nov., and C. tubigaster Almeida & Penteado-Dias sp. nov.

The addition of these new species places Centistes as the second richest genus after Meteorus for the Euphorinae in South America.