Local species richness of parasitoid wasps (Ichneumonidae: Pimplinae) in Afrotropical forest: Conservation perspectives

Abstract

<ol start="1"><li>Effective conservation of biodiversity relies on an understanding of its composition and distribution. Parasitoid wasps are an ecologically important and highly species-rich group of Hymenoptera but are poorly known in the tropics. One strategy for conserving their richness is based on finding out how the richness is distributed in different habitats.</li><li>Here, we investigate the local species richness and biological composition of parasitoid wasps (Ichneumonidae: Pimplinae) collected with Malaise traps in Ugandan tropical forest. We link the richness of Pimplinae and its four biological groups to habitat types across a successional gradient.</li><li>We found higher pimpline richness in forest than in nearby farmland, with the highest richness in the group of idiobiont parasitoids of weakly concealed hosts.</li><li>Our results suggest that protecting primary tropical forest may be particularly important for conserving a high richness of koinobiont ectoparasitoids of spiders and that nearby disturbed forest can have high parasitoid wasp richness after a few decades of regeneration.</li><li>Trapping in forest collected 5623 individuals of 83 species, which is high compared with pimpline richness at temperate latitudes, supporting a typical latitudinal diversity gradient of at least the Pimplinae subfamily of Ichneumonidae.</li></ol>