Diversity of Chalcididae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) from Agro-ecosystems of North Bengal with new records to West Bengal

The diversity of Chalcididae (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) species was studied from some selected areas of two agro climatic zones of West Bengal viz. Northern Hill Zone and Terai-Teesta Alluvial Zone. Chalcididae specimens were collected from Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts of West Bengal. The Darjeeling district comes under the Northern Hill agro-climatic zone which is famous for producing high quality tea. The Terai- Teesta alluvial region which include entire Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts also produces significantly large amount of tea. The fertile soil of Terai region is highly suitable for cultivating different types of important crops like Paddy, Jute and vegetables. Chalcididae specimens were primarily collected from 18 tea gardens of North Bengal including both organic and inorganic types and some specimens were also collected from natural vegetation. Sweep net and yellow pan traps were used to collect the Chalcididae specimens. An initial attempt is made to showcase the diversity of Chalcididae species from the agro-ecosystems of North Bengal which depict the presence of total 18 species belonging to 8 genera with 6 new distributional records to West Bengal. The genus Brachymeria has the highest number of species diversity with 6 species followed by the genus Antrocephalus with 4 species and the genus Kriechbaumerella with 3 species. The genus Haltichella and Hayatiella are reported for the first time from West Bengal.