Love is in the air and beyond the ocean: Taxonomic review of Neotrogaspidia Lelej (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae: Trogaspidiini) in Northeast Asia highlights its unique distributional pattern

Abstract

The genus Neotrogaspidia Lelej, 1996 is a small group of velvet ants with five species from the Australasian, Oriental and Palearctic Regions. The type species, N. pustulata (Smith, 1873) (♂♀), is the only Northeast Asian species known at present. In this paper, N. elpinice (Mickel, 1933), stat. resurr. et comb. nov. (♂♀) is resurrected from the junior synonym of N. pustulata. Two new combinations are proposed for N. circumcincta (André, 1896), comb. nov. (♂♀) from Orientidia Lelej, 1996 and N. recticarinata (Chen, 1957), comb. nov. (♂) from Trogaspidia Ashmead, 1899. New synonymies are proposed for N. elpinice with T. aestivalis Hammer, 1949, syn. nov. and T. maritima Chen, 1957, syn. nov., and N. circumcincta with T. yuliensis Tsuneki, 1972, syn. nov. and Krombeinidia agricola Williams, 2019, syn. nov. An updated genus diagnosis and a key to all described species are provided. New records include N. circumcincta from Laos and Vietnam, N. pustulata from North Korea, and N. recticarinata from Taiwan. The inflated endophallus of the male genitalia of N. pustulata is illustrated. A potential host record, habitat records and mating observations of Neotrogaspidia are presented. The historical process of formation of the distributional patterns of this genus in Northeast Asia is discussed.