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Introduction
The second author received from Antoni Ribes an aberrant specimen from SE Spain belonging to a new genus of the tribe Rhaconotini Fahringer, 1928 (Braconidae: Doryctinae). The Rhaconotini form a distinct tribe in the subfamily Doryctinae Foerster, 1862 (Zaldivar-Riverón et al., 2008) and are characterised by the closed first subdiscal cell of the fore wing, and the fourth and fifth metasomal tergites with a sharp lateral crease and dorsally more or less sculptured. The most striking feature of the new genus is the absence of vein r-m of the fore wing.
The specimen was collected from a home-made flight interception net, about 2 m wide and 1.2 m high, placed between two olive trees. The net is bent at the top and along the margins, to allow aggregation of the insects. The specimens are periodically collected from the net by hand. The habitat is an irrigated olive field, with some Citrus fields and Populus trees nearby.
Although the biology of this new taxon is unknown, members of the subfamily Doryctinae in general are idiobiont ectoparasitoids of coleopterous and other larvae living in wood and other more or less rigid plant tissue (Shaw & Huddleston, 1991). The recorded hosts of Rhaconotini belong, as far as known, (see Yu et al., 2007) to the Coleoptera (families Bruchidae, Buprestidae, Cerambycidae, Curculionidae, Proterrhinidae, Bostrychidae) and Lepidoptera (families Brachodidae, Crambidae, Gelechiiidae, Phycitidae, Pyralidae and Pyraustidae), but many host identities have been presumed from poorly controlled substrate rearings. Hosts in relatively slight woody stems and in galls seem often to be involved.
For recognition of the subfamily Doryctinae, see van Achterberg (1990, 1993, 1997), and for terminology used in this paper, see van Achterberg (1988). The abbreviation NMS stands for National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.