Biodiversity of Auchenorrhyncha in sugar beet fields of Mashhad region and new records for Khorasan Razavi province

In a faunistic survey conducted on Auchenorrhyncha in sugar beet fields of Mashhad and Chenaran regions during 2008-2010, a total of 2741specimens belonging to 5 families were collected. As a result, 10 species were added to the fauna of the study area including: Family Cicadellidae: Rhytidodus decimusquartus (Schrank 1776), Viridicerus malicola (Dubovxdy 1966); Handianus procerus (Herrich-Schaffer l835), Euscelidius mundus (Haupt 1927), Doraturopsis sp., Agallia sp.; Platymetopius sp., Family Tettigometridae: Tettigometra sordida (Fieber 1865); Family Aphrophoridae: Aphrophora salicina (Goeze 1778); Family Cixiidae: Reptalus bitinctus (Dlabola 1961). Empoasca meridiana (Zachvatkin 1946) and Circulifer haematoceps (Mulsant and Rey 1855), with 23.7 and 11.2 percent respectively, were the most abundant species in the study sites. The maximum and minimum values calculated for Shannon-Wiener index of diversity, based on data collected fortnightly from the selected fields in Mashhad region were observed in August and November, respectively. At mid-summer, when the index of biodiversity was the highest, the relative abundance of most species was high and there was more uniformity among the collected species.