Biodiversity of oak gall wasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) in oak forests of Sardasht, West-Azerbaijan

Oak gall wasps among food chains in the Zagros forest ecosystem are highly dependent on these trees. The gall wasps of the Cynipinae subfamily with 1380 species create the most attractive herbaceous plant galls with a very complex structure in the world. In this study, the distribution and diversity of oak gall wasps species, the samplings of oak gall wasps species based on the sexual and asexual generations were carried out in May and October of the year 2019, respectively. The collected gall wasps from Ghasem-rash, Shalmash, and Kani-rash regions were transferred to the laboratory by paper envelopes. 50 galls of each type were collected separately and placed in breeding containers that were closed with a net and could be properly ventilated. Shannon and Simpson diversity and uniformity indices as well as species richness were also calculated. In this study, 22 species of gall wasps, belonging to the genera Andricus, Chilaspis, Cynips, and Neuroterus (5 species of sexual offspring in spring and 17 species of asexual offspring in summer-autumn) were identified. The number of 18, 14, and 15 oak gall wasps species were collected from Ghasem-rash, Shalmash, and Kani-rash, respectively. Neuroterus numismalis was the most abundant in all regions. The highest species richness of the oak gall wasps species was recorded in Ghasem-rash. The calculated indices of species diversity and uniformity were the same in all regions and did not have significant differences.