ORIGINAL ARTICLE Parasitic wasps (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) associated with flower-heads of Asteraceae in Iran Alireza Pourhaji 1 & Hossein Lotfalizadeh 1 & Reza Farshbaf-Pourabad 2 & Babak Gharali 3 Received: 10 October 2018 /Accepted: 14 July 2019 # Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2019 Abstract This study was conducted to collect and identify chalcidoid wasps associated with Asteraceae and their possible hosts in the northwest of Iran during 2013–2014. Fourteen species of parasitoid wasps were recovered from 19 species of Asteraceae. These parasitoids include five Eulophidae: Aprostocetus malagensis, Crataepus marbis, Hyssopus nigritulus, Pronotalia hungarica; two Eurytomidae: Eurytoma compressa, Eurytoma robusta; one Eupelmidae: Eupelmus vesicularis; one Ormyridae: Ormyrus orientalis; three Pteromalidae: Pteromalus albipennis, Pteromalus sp., Sphengigaster nigricornis; two Torymidae: Pseudotorymus leguminum, Microdontomerus annulata. Four species, Aprostocetus malagensis, Pronotalia hungarica, Pseudotorymus leguminum and Sphengigaster nigricornis, are new records for the Hymenoptera fauna of Iran. All host-plant associations were newly established to the science. General distribution of these parasitoids and their biological associations were discussed. A list of associated Chalcidoidea to Tephritidae in Iran was presented. Keywords Host . Distribution . New record . Chalcidoidea . Palaearctic Introduction The flower-heads of Asteraceae are resource for many herbi- vore insects (Lewinsohn 1991). Some flower-head feeding insects lay their eggs on the flower-heads, where their larvae feed and develop (Zwölfer and Romstöck-Völkl 1991). This group includes some Diptera (Agromyzidae, Cecidomyiidae, Tephritidae), Hymenoptera (Cynipidae), Lepidoptera and Coleoptera families (Almeida-Neto et al. 2011). These phy- tophagous insects are attacked by parasitic wasps such as Chalcidoidea and Ichneumonoidea (Nascimento et al. 2014). Understanding the trophic relations between the phy- tophagous insects and their parasitoids is necessary to know the potential of these insects for biocontrol of weeds (Mitroiu et al. 2006). Lotfalizadeh and Gharali (2014) recovered 12 species of hymenopteran parasitoids belonging to the families of Eulophidae, Eurytomidae, Ormyridae, Pteromalidae, Torymidae and Braconidae from Carthamus tinctorius L., that were infested by four species of non-frugivorous Tephritidae (Diptera) and gall wasps (Hym.: Cynipidae) in Iran. From flower-head of Cirsium arvense (L.) (Asteraceae), four pteromalid parasitoids were reared from several species of non-frugivorous Tephritidae in Romania (Mitroiu et al. 2006). Nascimento et al. (2014) recovered 103 genera of Chalcidoidea and Ichneumonidea from 74 species of flower- heads of Asteraceae in Brazil. But these biocontrol agents have not been studied compre- hensively, therefore, during our investigations on non- frugivorous Tephritidae associated with Asteraceae in the northwest of Iran, we obtained some chalcidoid wasps that were further described in this paper. Material and methods This study was carried out in the northwest of Iran includ- ing of East and West Azarbaijan provinces (Fig. 1) during * Alireza Pourhaji A_pourhaji@yahoo.com 1 Plant Protection Department, East-Azarbaijan Agricultural and Natural Resources Research & Education Center, AREEO, Tabriz, Iran 2 Plant Protection Department, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran 3 Plant Protection Department, Qazvin Agricultural and Natural Resources Research & Education Center, AREEO, Qazvin, Iran Biologia https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-019-00319-7