Meteorus ictericus

This came to light and keyed to genus Meteorus - I won't say easily as Parasitica are never easy when you're relatively inexperienced with them, but smoothly enough that after running through the keys twice and reaching the same conclusion both times I was moderately confident. I found a key to the genus by Huddleston but couldn't get anywhere with this (except to dead ends) so I sought help via Twitter. Gavin Broad came to my rescue confirming it was indeed Meteorus and providing me with a much easier key to the tribe Meteorini (Stigenberg & Ronquist, 2011). Gavin suggested it might be ictericus but advised me to confirm by taking it through this key, and sure enough this led right to ictericus.

There were a few characters I struggled with, but fortunately this key usually provides a range of characters at each couplet enabling me to proceed even when one feature wasn't clear. For example couplet 16 required "antennae with about 30 articles or less" (vs. 30-40 articles for the other alternative). Mine had 34 (assuming the two basal segments are counted, not just the flagellum) which seemed to be stretching "about" 30 too far. In fact further down the key it does say female ictericus has 26-33 articles, so a little over 30 is clearly ok. I found the head shape difficult to assess, and the eyes seemed a little closer to the clypeus than shown for ictericus (more like ruficeps but other characters ruled that out). Other than that, everything seemed to check out ok for ictericus.

female Meteorus ictericus showing wings, tarsal claw, head (from front, top, side and close-up showing ocellar distances), side of thorax (showing sternaulus), propodeum, hind coxa, petiole (side view showing laterope and dorsal view) and tergites 3+, Wendling Beck Environment Project (Norfolk, UK), 7th November 2022