Assessing species richness of the subfamily Campopleginae (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae) community in Darab damask rose rain-fed plain, Fars province, Iran

Abstract

Here, the species richness of Campopleginae, a diverse subfamily of the Darwin wasps was studied in an almost organic damask rose plain located at 2600 m a.s.l., the south of Iran. Sampling was done using four Malaise traps for six months from April–October 2019. The total sampling efforts were 18 trap months. The integrated approach was used to assess the sample completeness profile, to infer true diversities of entire assemblages via asymptotic diversity estimates, to standardize the sample coverage via rarefaction and extrapolation, and to infer diversity via an evenness profile. I also used Homogenous, Homogenous (MLE), Chao1, Chao1-bc, iChao1, ACE, ACE-1, 1st order jackknife, and 2nd order jackknife to estimate the species richness of the studied Campopleginae community. Malaise traps yielded 491 individuals belonging to 24 morphospecies. Diadegma majale (Gravenhorst, 1829) included 64.7% of the total individuals collected, representing the highly dominated species. The estimated sample completeness profile showed that our data covers 59% of the total species in this community and thus 41% of species are undetected. The values for Shannon and Simpson diversity indices are 4.53 and 2.29, respectively. The models and non-parametric estimators estimated the species richness of Campoplegines from 24 – 50 species. This study provides a wealth of baseline data for the subfamily Campopleginae in the south of Iran in terms of biological control and conservation.

Keywords

• community structure
• conservation
• diversity
• ichneumonidae
• rarefaction
• extrapolation
• species richness