Diversity of arthropod harbored Mitnan, Thymelaea hirsute, shrub under rain-fed conditions of Habbes valley, Matrouh, Egypt

Abstract

Mitnan, Thymelaea hirsute (L.), is one of the abundantly distributed endemic shrubs in Matrouh's valleys. It acts as an alternative host for a vast range of arthropod species that may cause great damage for the economic cultivations. So the present work was carried out to study the arthropod diversity harbored Mitnan shrub. The collected species were belonging to 8 orders among which, order Hemiptera was the highest represented one, followed by Thysnoptera, Scorpions, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera, respectively. While, orders Diptera, Collembola and Coleoptera showed the lowest representation. Scouting process using the direct count method showed the surpassing of both species and individuals of the order Hemiptera with higher representation of herbivorous individuals than beneficial ones. Among arthropod species that recovered by sweeping net method, Hymenopterous ones came on the top of the list, whereas swept individuals showed that, dipterous species that belonged to family Cecidomyiidae came firstly by 6 total collected individuals. During the context of this study, the olive scale insect; Parlatoria oleae (Colvée) was recorded for the first time on Mitnan. Calculated diversity indices exhibited that, arthropod community harbored Mitnan shrub had high species richness (14), but as it was dominated by 3 species so that the diversity of this community is moderate.