Fecha de publicación: -- Fuente: PubMed "honey" Ecol Evol. 2026 Oct 15;16(10):e74415. doi: 10.1002/ece3.74415. eCollection 2026 Oct.ABSTRACTReliable species identification, host confirmation, and biological information are essential for evaluating parasitoids in natural-enemy systems. We integrated regional surveys, taxonomic evidence, direct host verification, life-history observations, and comparative mitogenomics to characterize Psyttalia carinata, newly recorded from China as a parasitoid of the sea buckthorn fruit fly, Rhagoletis batava. Surveys covered 30 sites across Xinjiang. Species identity was established by morphological diagnosis and expert verification, while host association was confirmed by parasitoid emergence and dissection of puparia formed by larvae from sea buckthorn fruits; all emerged tephritids were R. batava. Of 8260 puparia from Altay and Akqi, 595 yielded adults or contained immature P. carinata, giving an overall apparent parasitism of 7.2%. Psyttalia carinata developed as a solitary larval-pupal koinobiont endoparasitoid and overwintered as a pupa within the host puparium. Malaise trap monitoring across two field seasons detected one concentrated annual period of adult activity in the Altay population, consistent with a univoltine life cycle. A factorial experiment with 720 adults showed that longevity decreased with increasing temperature, was markedly extended by honey feeding, and was generally greater in females than males. Illumina sequencing yielded a complete 15,633-bp mitochondrial genome containing 37 genes and 82.7% A + T. Across five available Psyttalia mitogenome assemblies, variation was concentrated in tRNA gene order. P. carinata and P. incisi shared the same complete mitochondrial gene order, including nad4L-trnT-trnP-nad6, whereas P. concolor, P. humilis, and P. lounsburyi shared nad4L-trnP-trnT-nad6. However, phylogenetic analyses placed P. carinata as sister to the latter three-species clade rather than to P. incisi, indicating that identical gene order did not correspond to the closest sequence-based relationship. These findings provide an integrated biological and mitogenomic reference for P. carinata and a basis for evaluating its ecological role in the R. batava system.PMID:42890478 | PMC:PMC13671880 | DOI:10.1002/ece3.74415