A new genus of Braconid wasp has been named ‘Atree’, after the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a leading research institution and environmental think tank based in Bengaluru. This is said to be the first time in India that an institute has an eponymous insect genus.
The development comes with the discovery of a new species of wasp, Atree rajathae and two other already known species. The newly described species is a parasitoid wasp. An ATREE statement explained that parasitoids are the most important natural enemies of other insects, and humans exploit this behaviour for the biological control of crop pests.
“The other two known Taiwanese species Baeacis improcerus and Baeacis validus are also transferred to the new genus, considering their morphological affinities to Atree … The new genus belongs to the tribe Diospilini of subfamily Brachistinae. The tribe Diospilini consists of 13 genera and 125 species which are mostly distributed in the Palaearctic region. There are only six species known from the Indomalayan realm and Atree rajathae is the first report of the tribe Diosplini from India,” it said.
