Stink bug egg parasitoids (Hymenoptera, Scelionidae) associated with pistachio in Iran and description of a new species: Trissolcus darreh Talamas

Abstract

Surveys for egg-parasitoid wasps were conducted in Rafsanjan, Iran, on two species of Pentatomidae (Hemiptera) found in pistachio orchards, Acrosternum arabicum Wagner and Brachynema signatum Jakovlev. Five species of Scelionidae (Platygastroidea) were recovered, including one that is here described as new: Psix saccharicola (Mani), Trissolcus colemani (Crawford), T. darreh Talamas sp. nov., T. perepelovi (Kozlov), and T. semistriatus (Nees). In addition to describing a new species, we report new host associations, provide COI barcodes for four of these species, and discuss host-related intraspecific variation in T. darreh and T. perepelovi.

A checklist of Platygastridae and Scelionidae (Hymenoptera, Platygastroidea) of Iran

“…A similar situation was also highlighted for Scelionidae (Fig. 1B), which benefits from more explorations targeting the biocontrol agents of stem borers, the sunn pest and stink bugs (Abbasipour, 2004, Askarianzadeh et al, 2008Safavi, 1960Safavi, , 1973Radjabi, 2000;Amir-Maafi et al, 2002;Jamshidnia et al, 2010;Mehrnejad, 2013;Ranjbar et al, 2021;Mohammadpour et al, 2015Mohammadpour et al, , 2016. In both cases, the eastern provinces, occupying one third of the country, lack records of platygastroids, with the sole exception of Platygaster harteni, from South Khorasan (Asadifarfar, 2021a).…”

“…Many Trissolcus species, including those recorded in Iran were consequently considered as synonyms, and these specimens should be revisited to identify them in the light of new diagnostic characters. Despite the thoroughness of these recent taxonomic efforts, Iran still harbored a new species of Trissolcus, T. darreh, (Ranjbar et al, 2021), highlighting the need to study its rich fauna.…”

“…Distribution in Iran. Kerman (Ranjbar et al, 2021). - Tortorici et al, 2019;Germany -Awad et al, 2021;Greece, Italy -Tortorici et al, 2019;Kazakhstan, Korean Peninsula, Mongolia -Timokhov, 2019b;Pakistan, United Kindgom -Tortorici et al, 2019).…”

“…Considering the importance of scelionids in biological control, a study of their faunistics in Iran has started to provide background data on their occurrence and ecology, especially as it relates to taxa associated with the insect orders Hemiptera (Alexandrov, 1947a(Alexandrov, , 1947bVaezi, 1950, Safavi, 1973, Radjabi & Amir-Nazari, 1989Radjabi, 1994Radjabi, , 2000Radjabi, , 2001Iranipour & Johnson, 2010;Shafaei et al, 2011;Mehrnejad, 2013;Mohammadpour et al, 2015Mohammadpour et al, , 2016Ranjbar et al, 2021), Lepidoptera (Abbasipour et al, 1991;Abbasipour, 2004;Jamshidnia et al, 2010;Jamshidnia & Sadeghi, 2014), and Orthoptera (Khajehzadeh, 2002(Khajehzadeh, , 2004Khajehzadeh & Ghazavi, 2000;Khajehzadeh & Azmayeshfard, 2005). A few species records have been documented from sporadic faunistic studies in Iran (Iranipour et al, 1998;Noori et al, 2003;Shahpouri Arani et al, 2005;Rakhshani et al, 2008;Shamsi et al, 2014aShamsi et al, , 2014bShamsi et al, , 2015aShamsi et al, , 2015bLotfalizadeh et al, 2016;Lotfalizadeh, 2018).…”