Abstract
We present the first regional inventory of the fauna of Chalcididae in the Peruvian Amazon, with a nearly 6-fold increase in the number of species recorded for the country. A total of 418 specimens of Chalcididae were collected between 2000 and 2017 at the Panguana Reserve, Peruvian Amazon, 400 of which were obtained using Malaise traps and the remaining 18 specimens by canopy fogging. The morphological analyses indicated that these specimens represent 183 species of Chalcididae in 10 different genera, with 173 new to Peru and 134 potentially new species. We submitted 268 specimens, representing 167 species, to DNA barcoding. Of these, 141 specimens yielded sequences, 136 of them with a minimum of 300 bp. Sixty specimens were assigned a BIN by the Barcode of Life Database System (BOLD), resulting in 50 BINs. A cluster analysis of 138 individuals that yielded DNA sequences longer than 100 bp revealed 118 MOTUs (molecular operative taxonomic units), all of them highly congruent with the morphological data. Prior to the present study, 37 species in 9 genera of Chalcididae were known from Peru. With our results, this number was increased to 210 species in 13 genera. The present study is the result of a joint effort between the SNSB - Zoologische Staatssammlung München, Germany (ZSM) and the Insect Biodiversity Laboratory of the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil (LaBI-UFES), intending to apply an accelerated taxonomic treatment of the Chalcididae of the Panguana reserve using traditional morphological approaches in combination with DNA barcoding. The complete molecular dataset and associated voucher information is publicly available through BOLD. The new species that were discovered as part of the study are being formally described elsewhere as part of taxonomic treatments of Neotropical and world generic revisions at LaBI-UFES.
Highlights
Chalcididae is a medium-sized family with about 1,500 documented species in 87 genera and five subfamilies (Noyes 2018)
We present the first regional inventory of the fauna of Chalcididae in the Peruvian Amazon, with a nearly 6-fold increase in the number of species recorded for the country
From a total of 76 described species found in the samples, only 10 species previously known to occur in Peru were recovered (Table 1), resulting in 66 new occurrence records for the country
Summary
Chalcididae is a medium-sized family with about 1,500 documented species in 87 genera and five subfamilies (Noyes 2018). The secondary hosts are Lepidoptera (many families), Coleoptera (Coccinellidae), Hemiptera (Auchenorrhyncha), Orthoptera (Acrididae) and Araneae (Theridiidae) (Tavares and Aquino 2014, Noyes 2018, Tavares et al 2019). It is a family of parasitoid wasps that are moderately species-rich, the diversity of attacked hosts and of others biological aspects make the family contribute in a very diverse way to the structure and function of ecosystems. Many species have shown effective or potential importance as natural enemies of pests (Delvare 2006)
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