Interactions among host plants, Lepidoptera leaf miners and their parasitoids in the forest-steppe zone of Russia (Insecta: Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera)

The article reports on the quantitative description of the food web structure of the community consisting of 65 species of Lepidoptera leaf miners reared from 34 plant species, as well as 107 species of parasitoid eulophid wasps (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae). The study was conducted in the forest-steppe zone of the Middle Volga in Russia over 13 years (2000-2012). Leaf miners have been found to be highly host plant-specific. Most of them are associated with only one or two plant species and therefore the number of links between trophic levels is 73, which is close to the total number of Lepidoptera species (linkage density is 1.12). Most of the Eulophidae species are generalists, in contrast to the Lepidoptera, and they are associated with many species of leaf-miners; this increases the number of links between the Lepidoptera and the Eulophidae up to 385 (linkage density is 3.6).