Revision of the species Chalcidoidea (Insecta, Hymenoptera) deposited in the Museum of Natural History of the Scientific Institute in Rabat (Morocco)

This work presents the revision of twelve species of the superfamily of Chalcidoidea (Insecta, Hymenoptera) deposited in the National Museum of Natural History of the Scientific Institute, Rabat, Morocco. Data on biology and hosts of these species are given and a map of their distribution in the North Africa region is provided.

Data published through GBIF (Doi: 10.15470/q0ya99)


Introduction
The Chalcidoidea is a megadiverse superfamily of Apocrita (Hymenoptera) composed of 33 families. It includes around 25,000 known species and a total diversity estimated at more than 500,000 species, which means that most have not yet been discovered and described (Askew and Mifsud, 2016;Heraty et al., 2013). In addition, many species in this group of Hymenoptera are of great economic and agronomic importance because of their use as biological control agents.
Since 2012 in Morocco, we have been working on a research project focused on the inventory of Chalcidoidea, and have visited museums, including the National Museum of Natural History of the Scientific Institute (NMNH-SI), in Rabat. However, we found several specimens of the insect fauna recorded since the 1900s in the collection boxes had names that have not been updated and were even erroneous, never having been consulted or reviewed by specialists. This finding prompted us to revise all the species of this superfamily preserved in this former research institution.
The aim of this work therefore was to revise for the first time all the Chalcidoidea specimens from this old collection registered in the NMNH-SI in order to update and add to the diversity of the fauna of Morocco.

Neochalcis fertoni (Kieffer, 1899)
Euchalcis barbara Benoist, 1921: 118-120 Benoist, 1921). Comments: the result of a recent molecular phylogenetic study of the emblematic group Chalcididae using UCE showed that Neochalcis fertoni (described from Corsica) and N. barbara (described from Morocco) are different species (Cruaud et al., 2019(Cruaud et al., , 2020. Furthermore, Bouček (1952) also reported this species from Algeria and Tunisia apart from the type from Morocco (Benoist, 1921). In Morocco, this species was reared from Anthidium lituratum (Panzer, 1801) (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae) having established its nests in dried stems of Thapsia garganica Linnaeus, 1767 (Apiaceae) (Benoist, 1921).  Comments: identification is confirmed for this species. It was mentioned for the whole region of North Africa by Bouček (1952) in Algeria with a specimen deposited at the NMNH-SI, Rabat and Tunisia as well as in Morocco (Steffan, 1957). Its biology is still unknown.

Discussion
The Hymenoptera collection of the NMHN-SI is especially interesting as it includes ancient data, some of them 150 years old. It also includes a specimen of a type series of N. guyoni. The other Hymenoptera housed there belonging to several taxa such as the Tenthredinidae, Ichneumonoidea, Apoidea, Chrysidoidea and Vespoidea, some of them not yet identified. This work allowed to check and correct, when necessary, the identifications, and to update the nomenclature, thus providing reliable data for the present and future databases. Further specimens are in the process of being added, following our project of studying the Chalcidoidea of the Maâmora forest. This work in the NMHN-SI collection revealed the presence of 12 species of Chalcidoidea belonging to five families (table 1). Some of these samples have been deposited for more than century. The species names were often misspelled and, together with family names, descriptions were incorrect or outdated. Their spelling has now been corrected and updated and the nomenclature assigned to the species in the old collection has been revised and updated.
During this review, we found three specimens named Chalcis flavipes Panzer, C. intermedia Nees and Brachymeria minuta (Linnaeus). After examination, all three turned out to belong to a single species, Brachymeria tibialis, with C. intermedia being considered a junior synonym of B. tibialis. Concerning the encyrtid, it is an oophagous parasitoid that has been used for biological control of Lymantria dispar (Linnaeus) (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Lymantriinae) since it was first introduced in Morocco in the 1920s (De Lépiney, 1927).
In summary, Leucospidae specimens of Morocco preserved at the NMNH-SI have now been correctly identified and labeled. Specimens of these species from the same period are also stored at NMNH, Paris, France (pers. obs.).
Megastigmidae is an updated family name and Megastigmus stigmatizans (Fabricius, 1798) is now named Bootanomyia stigmatizans (Fabricius, 1798). It is well identified as are the two Algerian species appearing in this collection represented by a Chalcididae and a Pteromalidae. All species (11), except Norbanus guyoni (Pteromalidae), have been mentioned from Morocco. Figure 5 illustrates the geographical distribution of the species examined during this study in North Africa: none have been recorded from Mauritania.