Twenty-two new species in the genus Hyphantrophaga Townsend (Diptera: Tachinidae) from Area de Conservación Guanacaste, with a key to the species of Mesoamerica

Abstract

We describe 22 new species in the genus Hyphantrophaga Townsend, 1892 (Diptera: Tachinidae) from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in north-western Costa Rica. All species were reared from an ongoing inventory of wild-caught caterpillars spanning a variety of families (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae, Crambidae, Depressariidae, Doidae, Erebidae, Euteliidae, Gelechiidae, Geometridae, Hedylidae, Hesperiidae, Immidae, Lasiocampidae, Limacodidae, Megalopygidae, Mimaloniidae, Noctuidae, Nolidae, Notodontidae, Nymphalidae, Papilionidae, Pieridae, Phiditiidae, Pterophoridae, Pyralidae, Riodinidae, Saturniidae, Sphingidae, Thyrididae, Tortricidae and Zygaenidae). We provide a morphological description of each species together with information on life history, molecular data and photographic documentation. In addition to the new species, we provide a redescription of the genus, as well as the redescription of three previously described species, which were also collected within ACG during this study: Hyphantrophaga angustata (van der Wulp), Hyphantrophaga myersi (Aldrich) and Hyphantrophaga virilis (Aldrich & Webber).