A Key to Genera of Iranian Lady Beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) and Species of Subfamilies Chilocorinae, Coccinellinae, Epilachinae and Microweiseinae

摘要

A key to genera of Iranian Coccinellidae, besides species of subfamilies Chilocorinae, Coccinell' Epilachinae and Microweiseinae is given.Lady beetles or ladybirds, as the largest family in the newly recognized superfam-ily Coccinelloidea (Robertson et al. 2015) with about 6000 species described worldwide (Iablokoff-Khanzorian 1982; Vandenberg 2002), are well known as mostly beneficial predators of aphids, scale insects and mites. Also, some species of ladybirds are so sensitive to changes in the environment that could be considered as evaluation factors of the health of ecosystems (Iperti 1999), which increases their importance in the nature. Nevertheless, some of them are mycophagous and phytophagous which could be sometimes considered as a pest (Dobzhansky 1933).