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Evangelos Koutsoukos, searching for wasps in the field. Credit - Evangelos Koutsoukos.

Wasp diversity finally revealed in Cyprus

The third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus is situated at the crossroads of the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. It is often considered to be a biodiversity hotspot, yet a large proportion of its fauna has yet to be thoroughly studied. Despite its limited geographical area, Cyprus demonstrates a remarkable variety of different habitat types, which in turn serve as biodiversity havens and contribute to the species richness of the island. Even quite restricted geographical areas, such as Akrotiri (UK Sovereign Base Area), include a large number of different habitat types. Nevertheless, despite many conservation and research efforts, a large part of Cyprus’s fauna (especially arthropods) remains understudied.

Chalcid wasps (insects within the superfamily Chalcidoidea, part of the order Hymenoptera) are found on Cyprus. They constitute one of the most diverse insect groups, and they regulate other arthropod populations in both natural and man-made habitats.

I was awarded a two-year Darwin Plus Fellowship for the project titled ‘Species richness and biological invasions of Chalcid wasps in Akrotiri Peninsula’. There were three aims of this project:

1. Provide a baseline understanding of the species of Chalcid wasps present in the Akrotiri Peninsula to enhance scientific research around the region’s fauna.
2. Raise public awareness and pool, supplement, and summarise our knowledge of the Chalcid wasp fauna of Cyprus in general, by creating an online portal, ‘Chalcid wasps of Cyprus’.
3. Establish the basis of a long-term project regarding the whole Chalcid wasp fauna of Cyprus collecting specimens across the island.

Specimen collecting efforts were focused within Akrotiri Peninsula and its nearby areas, although opportunistic sampling took place in various localities within the administrative divisions of Limassol and Paphos. Akrotiri is a UK Sovereign Base Area, a protected area and Ramsar site currently under many anthropogenic pressures. It is a habitat-rich area, facing a series of challenges mainly due to anthropogenic factors, so we tried to sample as many habitat types as possible. By collecting specimens from both undisrupted and under pressure areas, aiming to collect native and introduced species, we looked to understand how these pressures affect chalcid wasp communities.

At the beginning of this project, the island’s checklist of Chalcid wasps - based on the old Universal Chalcidoidea Database website - was limited to just 124 species. This number was low compared to nearby countries, as no structured study had been conducted on the island. Also, most of the species’ records concerned biological control (i.e. collected details tracked the effectiveness of measures to control pests and diseases), or were collected by Georgios Mavromoustakis, one of the most prominent Cypriot entomologists of the past century. Two years later, and after intensive collecting efforts, the numbers have skyrocketed, with the number standing at more than 488 species, with only eight more species to be identified before the initial count will have been quadrupled!

From Akrotiri, only 5 species were known before the beginning of this project and based on our findings, more than 100 Chalcid wasp species occur in this geographically limited area. Moreover, at least 73 non-native species occur in Cyprus, which is a great proportion of the total non-native insect fauna of the island; out of 369 species, nearly 20% are Chalcid wasps! Furthermore, more than 30 species are possibly undescribed, along with one new genus. All these considered, many enigmatic specimens remain to be examined thoroughly (both morphologically and molecularly), indicating that the numbers above are only temporary.

In my search for Cypriot specimens, my endeavours were not limited to the fields of Cyprus and Akrotiri. Through this Fellowship, I also had the opportunity to visit the Natural History Museum of London. There, I was introduced to its vast Chalcid wasp collection, locating hundreds of Cypriot specimens and at least 40 unpublished species for the island. While there, I also had the opportunity to meet world-known hymenopterists (experts that study the insect order Hymenoptera, in which Chalcid wasps are found), which took the experience to a new high. I also had the opportunity to attend the Distributed European School of Taxonomy course on parasitic wasps in Iasi, Romania, meeting and working with Chalcidoidea specialists.

What is next? All these new interesting records and descriptions will be made available through scientific publications which are currently being written. Moreover, all published information from the work of this Darwin Plus Fellowship, and that from other researchers, will be integrated into the Chalcid wasps of Cyprus website. This will serve as a legacy to this project, aiming to enhance the research on Chalcid wasps in the region, and highlight their importance both to humans and the environment.

I would like to wholeheartedly thank the UK Government through Darwin Plus for funding this project, as well as Enalia Physis for supporting and administrating the project. Special thanks go to the team members Dr. Angeliki Martinou, Prof. Helen E Roy, Dr. Stephen Compton, Dr. Mircea-Dan Mitroiu, Dr. Christer Hansson, Dr. Gerard Delvare, Prof. (Emeritus) Richard Askew, Dr. Christos Georgiadis, Mr Jakovos Demetriou, and Mr Christodoulos Makris. Their assistance and guidance on this project was invaluable and greatly contributed to its fruitfulness.

Written by Evangelos Koutsoukos. For more information on this Darwin Plus Fellowship project DPLUS202, led by Enalia Physis, please click here.