New records for a catalogue of Chalcididae (Hymenoptera, Chalcidoidea) from Morocco

New records for a catalogue of Chalcididae (Hymenoptera, Chalcidoidea) from Morocco. Three species of Chalcididae (Hymenoptera, Chalcidoidea) were newly recorded from Morocco during a study carried out in the Maâmora forest between 2012 and 2014: Hockeria bifasciata (Walker, 1834), H. mengenillarum (Silvestri, 1943) and Proconura decipiens (Masi, 1929). P. decipiens (Masi, 1929) stat. rev. will be removed from synonymy with P. nigripes (Fonscolombe, 1832). This study includes bibliographical research and revision of specimens deposited in the National Museum of Natural History, Scientific Institute of Rabat (Morocco). Twenty–six species and fourteen genera belonging to the family Chalcididae (Hymenoptera, Chalcidoidea) are now catalogued from Morocco. Data published through GBIF (Doi: 10.15470/nochzr)

The aim of this study is to present for the first time a faunistic synthesis of Moroccan Chalcididae wasps with new records and information about their distribution.

Material and methods
The material studied here belongs to samples collected by the authors in the field together with revision of the material deposited in the MNHNM. Bibliographical data have also been added in this study.
The climate of the Maâmora forest is in general thermo-Mediterranean, sub-humid at the first station and semi-arid at the other two stations (Métro and Sauvage, 1955). Geographical positions are given using coordinates in Merchich's geographic reference system.

Species previously known in Morocco
There are species already mentioned in the literature but not found in the present study, and also species deposited in museums in addition to those already cited in the catalogue of Noyes (2009 Jourdan and Rungs (1934: 210) in Rabat and in Tangier (MNHNM, Rabat) and this record is not included in Noyes (2019).

Dirhinus himalayanus Westwood, 1836
Remarks: this species was reported by Blanchot (1992: 7) from Zagora, a large number in swine facility but it is not included in Noyes (2019).

Discussion
This study presents data, for the first time, on 26 species of Chalcididae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) belonging to 14 genera and 4 subfamilies in Morocco. Of these, Hockeria bifasciata Walker, 1834, H. mengenillarum (Silvestri, 1943), and the genus Proconura represented by P. decipiens (Masi, 1929), found in cork oak forest of Maâmora, are new records from Morocco. These species are possibly economically relevant because they are parasitoids of various pests. Hockeria bifasciata is reported as a primary parasitoid of some families of Lepidoptera, and H. mengenillarum is also a primary parasitoid of Strepsiptera (Bouček, 1952 Knowledge of Chalcididae, particularly in the North African region, is still very incomplete and has several shortcomings. Comparison of Moroccan Chalcididae with the fauna of other North African countries reveals that Morocco currently has greater species richness of this family (24 species) than its neighbouring countries. In Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania 21, 20, 15, 13 and 1 species are cited, respectively. Nevertheless, these data do not reflect the reality according to Noyes (2019); because unfortunately no recent revisions are available and no recent studies have been conducted in all countries in the region.
Finally, despite the economic relevance of various species of this family and of other families of Chalcidoidea, they have not been the focus of studies in Moroccan until our research project that began in 2012 in the cork oak forest of Maâmora (Kissayi and Benhalima, 2016, 2017bDelvare et al., 2017;Kissayi et al., , 2017b. Located in the western Palaearctic region, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, in addition to being one of the 34 hotspots of biodiversity, Morocco most probably hosts a large entomofauna. Faunistic studies and further investigations on chalcids wasps are thus strongly recommended in other parts of the country and indeed throughout the entire North African region.