148 G. E. J. NIXON 



England. Type in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.). 

 Host: Bucculatrix cristatella Zeller (Lyonetiidae) (Kent, Dartford). 

 This species has the mesoscutum virtually impunctate while in carbonarius it is 

 distinctly punctate. 



The BUCCULATRICIS-Grovp 

 Monobasic. 



Apanteles bucculatricis Muesebeck 



Apanteles bucculatricis Muesebeck, 1920 : 502. 



There are in the British Museum collection one female determined as bucculatricis 

 by Muesebeck (California, Berkeley) and labelled as " parasitic on Bucculatrix alberti- 

 ella Bank " and two males presumably sent to London at the same time as the female 

 but without Muesebeck's identification label ; these are from California, Palo Alto, 

 labelled as bred from Bucculatrix sp. on Quercus agrifolia and are evidently part of the 

 type series. 



Muesebeck noted that this species differed from all others of the genus known to 

 him in possessing a very large areola and in having tergite 1 and (2 + 3) enlarged, 

 coarsely rugose and occupying almost the entire surface of the gaster. 



In general appearance, the gaster of this species is remarkably like that of carbon- 

 arius but the difference in the structure of the propodeum is fundamental and, in my 

 opinion, excludes the probability of a close relationship between the two species. 

 Far more likely is an affinity with the ultor-group, for bucculatricis possesses the three 

 essential features of this group, namely, an obviously, if rather finely, punctate meso- 

 scutum, transverse, postero-lateral, propodeal areas and a vannal lobe that is convex 

 and fringed with hairs throughout. Among the species of the ultor-gxowp, hemitheae 

 Wilkinson (1928) from the Indo-oriental region shows a structural and sculptural 

 development of the gaster very similar to that of bucculatricis, though in other 

 respects the two species are widely dissimilar. 



The finding of other American species related to bucculatricis, if such occur, would 

 doubtless help to define its correct systematic position within Apanteles. 



The METACARPALIS-Group 



The species I group together under this heading seem to be rather closely related 

 to the circumscrifttus-gToup but beyond this and what has already been expressed in 

 the key, there is little I am prepared to say about them at this stage. A . metacarpalis, 

 the typical representative of the group, is a fairly common species, at any rate in 

 England. 



I am acquainted with less than a dozen European species that I would put in this 

 group, among them corvinus Reinhard (Wilkinson, 1945) and coniferae Haliday 

 (Wilkinson, 1945). 



I also consider as belonging to this group, dioryctriae Wilkinson (1938) and murin- 

 anae Capek & Zwolfer (1957). 



