Biodiversity of vespid wasps in spatial and temporal dimensions in northern Zanjan Province of Iran

Abstract

Vespidae is one of the major families of Hymenoptera with more than 115000 described species. In the present paper, Simpson and Shannon-Wiener diversity indices, Simpson, Camargo, Smith and Wilson, and modified Nee evenness indices, and richness index based on rarefaction method were adopted to study the biodiversity of vespid wasps in spatial and temporal dimensions in northern Zanjan Province of Tran. In spatial dimension, Zanjan and Gilvan showed the highest and the lowest species diversity, evenness, and richness, respectively; while in temporal dimension, 16 July - 6 August showed the highest species diversity and richness, and 18 May - 27 May and 23 August - 2 September showed the highest and the lowest species evenness, respectively. Significant differences in species abundance between localities of study area were observed by Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric test.