Journal of Insect Biodiversity and Systematics
Volume:6 Issue: 1, Mar 2020

Tenothrips hispanicus (Bagnall) was collected from Fars province, south of Iran. This is the first report of the species from Iran. Characterization of the species, comparison with its close species, T. frici (Uzel) as well as their illustrations are provided.

The spider wasps (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae) of Kerman province were faunistically investigated. A total of 17 species of 12 genera belonging to three subfamilies, Ceropalinae, pepsinae and pompilinae were collected during 2017–2018 and identified. Among the collected material, three species of Ceropalinae, Ceropales juncoi Giner, 1945, Ceropales kriechbaumeri Magretti, 1884, Ceropales maroccana de Beaumont, 1947 and a single species of Pompilinae, Agenioideus gentilis (Klug, 1834) are recorded for the first time for the fauna of Iran. Geographical distribution of each species in Kerman province, Iran and outside Iran are presented.

The genus Taeniothrips Amyot & Serville is belonging in the subfamily Thripinae with only one species in Iran. Here, the second species, T. eucharii (Whetzel) is newly recorded from the country. Male and female specimens of this species have been collected on the flowers of Ixiolirion tataricum (Amaryllidaceae) from Ilam province (west of Iran).

231 species of the family Vespidae (Hymenoptera, Vespoidea) of Iran, in 55 genera belonging to 4 subfamilies Eumeninae (45 genera, 184 species), Masarinae (5 genera, 24 species), Polistinae (2 genera, 17 species) and Vespinae (3 genera, 6 species) are listed. An overall assessment of the distribution pattern of the vespid species in Iran indicates a complex fauna of different biogeographic regions. 111 species are found in both Eastern and Western Palaearctic regions, while 67 species were found only in the Eastern Palaearctic region. Few species (14 species – 6.1%) of various genera are known as elements of central and western Asian area and their area of distribution is not known in Europe (West Palaearctic) and in the Far East. The species that were found both in the Oriental and Afrotropical Regions comprises 11.7 and 15.6% the Iranian vespid fauna, respectively. Many species (48, 20.8%) are exclusively recorded from Iran and as yet there is no record of these species from other countries. The highest percentage of the vespid species are recorded from Sistan-o Baluchestan (42 species, 18.2%), Alborz (42 species, 18.2%), Fars (39 species, 16.9%) and Tehran provinces (38 Species 16.5%), representing the fauna of the Southeastern, North- and South Central of the country.

Increasing roads become the serious conservation threats to the animal populations. The most direct effect of roads on them is deadly collision with vehicles, leading to high levels of injury or death. Estimates of detectability of road-killed higher vertebrates have been determined but not for the invertebrates like butterflies, although they are frequently killed insects group on roads. This is the first comprehensive mortality census of road-killed butterflies in Nepal. The main aim of this study was to estimate the detectability of road-killed butterflies in Mahendra Highway, the busiest highway in Nepal. We established eight transects, each of 500 m long within the randomly selected forest and human settlement landscapes. Pearson’s correlation was calculated to test the link between the number of road-killed and living butterflies. All together 1000 butterfly individuals were counted throughout the study periods including road-killed and living butterflies. Among them, 364 butterflies were counted raodkilled whereas 636 butterflies were living. Forest landscape contributed higher number in both road-killed and living butterflies than human settlement landscape. Also, the number of butterflies killed on the roads were significantly correlated with number of living butterflies on the road. Our results indicate that road has the significant impact on loss of butterfly population. Also, higher the number of living butterflies more will be road mortality. The public awareness and maintaining the habitats with high forbs cover, gardening, avoid depositing asphalts, etc. in the vicinity of road can denigrate the rate of road mortality of butterflies.

There are very few reports discussing the higher level phylogeny of the chewing lice (Phthiraptera) and their roles in the evaluation of these insects. So, the aim of this work is to study the phylogeny of genera of the suborder Ischnocera in Saudi Arabia using morphological, ecological and molecular criteria trying to answer a very important question about ecological factors that affecting their evolution. The results show high degree of similarity between phylograms produced by morphological and ecological criteria and that produced by genes sequencing data of Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit I (COI) and elongation factor-1 alpha (EF-1). The rooted trees showed several clusters for head chewing lice and this indicated that the phenomenon of parasitizing birds’ heads evolved several times in the clade of chewing louse. This is also indicating that the position on host played a very important role in shaping the diversity of these insects. The unrooted tree which produced by analysis of COI and (EF-1) also supports the previous conclusion but added to it the impact of host habitat on such diversity. The evolutionary distance between marine birds’ chewing lice was very small and all of them appear in single line or group which far from that of terrestrial taxa of the chewing lice. Both the host habitat and the feeding position of chewing lice on their hosts played a very important role in the way by which this group of insects evolved.

Bark beetles are one of the most important pests in forests. Because of their small size and highly similar morphological characters, molecular approaches may be quite useful for a valid species determination. In this context molecular identification represents an accurate and modern method for species identification. The purity and high quantity of extracted DNA have important role in successful amplification of the target fragment of the genome. The aim of this study was comparing different DNA extraction methods in order to choose the highest quality and quantity of DNA extract for the identification of bark beetles. During the study bark beetles were collected from different parts of the North forests of Iran. Five different DNA extraction methods were performed and evaluated on individual specimen including Chelex, Phenol chloroform, CTAB, salting out and Lysis buffer in the laboratory. The quantity and quality of extracted DNA were measured by spectrophotometer and gel electrophoresis. The result of DNA quantity mean ranged between (23.6-579.7 ng/µl) and the mean quality which was measured by 260/280 ratio (0.9-1.8). The statistical analysis was done by SPSS software, revealing significant differences between extraction methods. The results suggested that Chelex and salting out showed the highest quantity of all used methods.