Local diversity of Afrotropical and Neotropical Brachycyrtinae (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae), with two new species from western Amazonia and keys to species

Brachycyrtinae is a small subfamily of Darwin wasps (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae) containing one distinctive genus: Brachycyrtus Kriechbaumer, 1880. Here, we report the local diversity of brachycyrtines collected by extensive sampling in the Neotropics and Afrotropics and expand the distributional records of eleven Neotropical and one Afrotropical species. We provide identification keys and minimal diagnoses for all known Neotropical and Afrotropical species, list all known Afrotropical brachycyrtine material, and discuss the phenology, habitat use, and morphological variation of selected species.

We compare the local species richness of tropical rain forest sites in Peru and Uganda. Additionally, we describe B. granulatus Österman & Sääksjärvi, sp. nov. and B. politus Österman & Sääksjärvi, sp. nov. from Ecuador and Peru, the males of B. convergens Cushman, 1936 and B. antoninoi Di Giovanni, 2021, and synonymise B. zani Gauld & Ward, 2000 (syn. nov.) with B. xorix Gauld & Ward, 2000.