Diversity of the genus Dolichopus Latreille in three different habitats of East Azerbaijan Province , with new records for Iran

© [2013] Copyright belongs to the authors, who license the journal Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica to publish the paper under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which permits its distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source, the journal Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica, are cited. Diversity of the genus Dolichopus Latreille in three different habitats of East Azerbaijan Province, with new records for Iran


Introduction
The Dolichopus Latreille, 1796, comprises about 630 species, being the largest genus of the family Dolichopodidae.It occurs predominantly in the Holarctic Region with about 290 species known in the Palaearctic Region.Adults of this genus are medium-sized, typically less than 8 mm in length, and usually metallic green.Adults and larvae of probably all species are predators.
This genus is morphologically close to Hercostomus Loew, 1857, and Lichtwardtia Enderlein, 1912, differing from Hercostomus in the hind basitarsus bearing 1-3 strong setae dorsally and the pteropleuron having a group of fine hairs in front of the posterior spiracle, and differing from the Lichtwardtia in M 1+2 wing vein being sigmatoid in the middle portion of the distal part, rarely with one stublike vein, and generally much more developed epandrial lobes and cerci in male genitalia (Grichanov, 2011).
Some important studies on this family in the Palearctic region have been done, for example, Grichanov (2007Grichanov ( , 2011) ) prepared keys to East Mediterranean species and Palaearctic subfamilies and genera of Dolichopodidae.Pollet (2004) provided a European fauna database.Regarding the dolichopodid distribution in Europe, only very few studies have been done recently (Pollet, 2001;Kechev, 2012).
Fifty-seven species of the family Dolichopodidae have now been recorded from Iran (Grichanov et al., 2010;Khaghaninia et al., 2013;Gharajedaghi et al., in press).Grichanov et al. (2010) reported eight species of the genus Dolichopus.Khaghaninia et al. (2013) and Gharajedaghi et al. (in press) reported 10 species of this genus from Iran.Khaghaninia et al. (2014) described a new species of the Dolichopus plumipes species group.This is the first study of species diversity of the genus Dolichopus in Iran.As the fauna of the family Dolichopodidae is poorly known in Iran, further studies are needed.

Study areas
Materials were collected from grassland, semi-aquatic and forest habitats in four regions (Chichakli, Keleybar, Kandovan and Qurigol) of East Azerbaijan Province, Iran, in 2013.Chichakli and Keleybar are located in the Qaradagh Forest (fig.1).Qaradagh Forest is situated in north western Iran, bordering with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and belonging to the Iranian Highlands bound in the north by the Lesser Caucasus.Its geographic latitudes and longitudes are 38° 40.524' to 39° 08.562' N, 46° 39.256' to 47° 02.652' E. This area has rangelands and forests, rivers and springs at an altitude varying from 256 m in the vicinity of Araz river to 2,896 m, and it covers an area of 78,560 hectares.It is registered in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1976.The Kandovan valley is one of the longest valleys in the Sahand mountain chain.It is about 12 km in length and is located in south east of East Azerbaijan Province, about 35.5 km from Tabriz city,with coordinates 37° 46.370' to 37° 76.564' N and 46° 16.323' to 46° 45.253' E at varying altitude from 1,860 to 3,110 m (fig.2A).It is a mixed area that has rich grass lands with various species of Asteraceae, Apiaceae, Leguminaceae, Poaceae and Ranunculaceae, and various crops are also cultivated in this region.
The Qurigol (Ghorighol) region is a wetland area located on 200 hectares with a small lake with fresh to brackish water, with associated marshes in the steppe uplands of northwestern Iran.There are extensive areas of reed beds; some species of Asteraceae, Cyperaceae, Lamiaceae, Plantaginaceae, Poaceae and Ranunculaceae are also found in this area.It A B is situated at about 40 km east-southeast of Tabriz city with coordinates 37° 55. 254' to 37° 56.542' E, 46° 42.257' to 46° 54.253' N at varying altitude from 1,833 m to 1,950 m (fig.2B).The surrounding area is semi-arid, and wheat is cultivated on the west and on damp grasslands in the southwest.The sweeping net with diameter of 40 cm (standard size and method based on Martin (1977) was used for sampling studied areas in 2013.Samples were collected every three weeks by making 100 sweeps with the net over a distance of about 100 m.Sampling was also restricted to the period between 10.00 h and 16.30 h, and the sampling order of the fields varied between weeks.Every site was sampled between six and eight times from late May to early September.The specimens are deposited at the Insect Museum of Tabriz University (IMTU).The distribution part of the list includes adjacent countries and notes on the general distribution for each species after Grichanov (2007) and Grichanov's online database DoliBank (2003DoliBank ( -2013) ) (available from http://dolicho.narod.ru/Genera3.htm).

Measurement of alpha diversity
Data analysis was calculated by SDR (Species Diversity and Richness) software, version 4.0 (Seaby & Henderson, 2006).The following diversity indices were used to describe the species diversity in the studied area according to Magurran (2004): 1. Shannon-Wiener: where: p i is the proportion of individuals in each species and S the species number (species richness).

Simpson΄s
where: N i is the number of individuals in each species and N t is the total individuals in the sample.
3. Pielou J evenness index: where H' is the Shannon-Wiener function and S is the total number of species observed.

Similarity index
The Sørensen index, also known as Sørensen's similarity coefficient, is a statistic used to compare the similarity of two samples.The Sørensen coefficient is mainly useful for ecological community data (Magurran, 2004): where S s is the Sørensen similarity index, a the common species in the region A and B; b the number of species in the region A that do not exist in the region B; c the number of species in the region B that do not exist in region A. This index will be equal to one, when the sum of the species of two habitats is quite similar.

Results
In this study, 17 species of the genus Dolichopus were collected from the East Azerbaijan Province, of which three species (D. siculus, D. kiritshenkoi and D. plumipes) are newly reported for the Iranian insect fauna.Species are listed in alphabetic order.

Distribution
Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Demark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia (Karelia, Leningrad, Moscow, Nenetsia, Pskov, Vologda, Voronezh), Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and Ukraine (Cherkasy); Iran (Khaghaninia et al., 2013).4D), hind basitarsus with two dorsal setae, hind femur without fringe of long hairs, at most with hairs hardly more than half as long as greatest diameter of femur; hypopygium of male as (fig.4C).Female is similar to male except lacking male secondary sexual characters, otherwise as follows: face whitish-grey; postpedicel as long as high; legs simple.It differs from the closest species in blackish-brown apex of hind femur.

Remarks
The species was described by males only (Khaghaninia et al., 2014).This is the first description of the female.
A B C D Remarks Some specimens have taxonomically insignificant colour variations including the cercus colour (fig.6D), representing probably demasculinised forms due to the effect of parasitic nematodes on the secondary sexual diagnostic features (Kahanpää, 2008).

Species diversity in different areas of East Azerbaijan Province
Alpha diversity indices for the different areas are shown in table 2. The species number was highest in Chichakli, followed by Keleybar and Kandovan, while Qurigol had the lowest species number.The diversity and evenness indexes showed a significant difference among the studied areas at 5% level (P < 0.05).They were the highest in Chichakli followed by Keleybar and Kandovan, while Qurigol had the lowest diversity (table 2).

Species composition similarity between areas
The similarity indices for the studied areas are shown in figure 7. The highest similarity (0.83) was observed between Chichakli and Keleybar, followed by Kandovan and Keleybar (0.62); while the least similarity (0.20) was observed between Kandovan and Qurigol, followed by Chichakli and Qurigol (0.22).

Discussion
The highest biodiversity was found in forestry areas (Chichakli and Keleybar) that have the highest diversity and species number.This could be related to the rich vegetation and high diversity of plant species and to restrictions of human activities in protected forests, favouring conditions for the development of insect fauna.On the other hand, Chichakli and Keleybar regions had the highest similarity based on the Sørensen's similarity index.Kandovan forest area had the highest species number and species diversity; its mixed cropping and grassland area provide food resources for insect prey growth on plants such as flowers and crops.Qurigol region had the lowest species diversity and species number, possibly due to poor vegetation and low plant species diversity in this wetland area covered by marshes.
Regarding biology of Dolichopus species, which are predators on small soft-bodied insects, it can be concluded that their population numbers are related to regional flora; so the greater the plant diversity, the larger and more diverse the insect prey and predator populations.Hutchinson (1959) found a positive correlation between plant food and species richness, suggesting that more numerous plant species potentially provide more niches for the development of animal species.Based on Sørensen's similarity index, the fauna of the Qurigol forestry area had the lowest similarity.Debinski & Holt (2000) noted that the very low compositional similarity of species between areas is probably due to habitat fragmentation that reduces area, changes ecological processes, and reduces connectivity.
Dolichopus longitarsis was the dominant species in the Chichakli, Keleybar and Kandovan regions, and D. simplex was the dominant species in Keleybar, Kandovan and Qurigol regions.It can therefore be concluded that these species dominate in East Azerbaijan province and D. plumipes dominates in Chichakli and Keleybar regions.We thus suggest that the latter species can be found more in forest areas.As D. perversus is the eudominant in Qurigol it can be supposed that this species occurs more in wetland area, though it was also found in a low frequency in forest areas.
This study aimed to survey aspects regarding the biodiversity of the genus Dolichopus in East Azerbaijan Province.As our results show high species diversity for the genus in this area, other dolichopodid genera merit research in the future.

Table 1 .
Comparison of relative abundance of species of the genus Dolichopus in regions of East Azerbaijan Province, Iran.Tabla 1. Comparación de la abundancia relativa de especies del género Dolichopus en las zonas de la provincia de Azerbaiyán Oriental, Irán.

Table 2 .
Shanon-Wiener and Simpson diversity indices and Pielou J evenness index for the genus Dolichopus in regions of East Azerbaijan Province, Iran.Tabla 2. Índices de diversidad de Shanon-Wiener y Simpson e índice de equidad de Pielou J para el género Dolichopus en las zonas de la provincia de Azerbaiyán Oriental, Irán.
Fig. 7. Similarity indices for the genus Dolichopus in regions of East Azerbaijan Province, Iran.