Braconidae  

Hymenoptera are one of the most diverse insect orders worldwide, with more than 152,677 known species (Aguiar et al. 2013). Braconidae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonoidea) is the second largest family of Hymenoptera, with 19,801 valid species belonging to 1,071 genera, but that probably is less than 20% of the total diversity worldwide (van Achterberg 2014). Members of Braconidae are distributed in all zoogeographical regions (Yu et al. 2012). The majority of the species are parasitoids especially upon the larval stages of insect pests in the various orders including Coleoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera (Shaw and Huddleston 1991; Wharton 1997).

The first recorded braconid species from Iran was from the early 20th century (Szépligeti 1901). Telenga (1936, 1941, 1955) recorded several species for the Iranian braconid fauna. Hedwig (1957) recorded 26 species of Braconidae from south eastern Iran (Sistan & Bluchestan province), ten of which were described as new to science. Subsequently, Hellen (1958), Mackauer (1960), Fischer (1963), Mirabzadeh (1968), Davatchi and Shojai (1969) and Starý (1974, 1975, 1979, 1981) added several species to this list. Many studies have been conducted on the Braconidae fauna as scattered reports by Iranian researchers (eg. Monajemi and Esmaili 1981; Al-e-Mansour and Mostafavi 1993; Siahpoush et al. 1993; Mojeni 1994; Goldansaz et al. 1996; Shamszadeh 1998; Bagheri 1998; Abbasipour 2001). The braconid fauna of Iran has been subjected to extensive survey during the last decade (Rakhshani et al. 2004, 2005a–b, 2006a–b, 2007a–b, 2008a–c, 2012a–b; Farahani et al. 2012a–f, 2013a–d, 2014a–h, 2015a–b; Barahoei et al. 2012, 2013, 2014; Ameri et al. 2012, 2014a–d, 2015; Khajeh et al. 2014a–b; Peris-Felipo et al. 2014, 2015, 2016; Gadallah and Ghahari 2013a–b, 2015; Gadallah et al. 2015a–b, 2016a–b).