Abstract
In current study, extensive field surveys are carried out to explore the fauna of assassin bugs of family Reduviidae, along with their habitats and prey records from different localities in the Pothohar region of Pakistan. The quantitative web structure is constructed for better understanding species habitat linkage and is represents a total of twelve different assassin bug species, of which five were identified as new country records i.e., Tribelocephala indica (Stal, 1853), Coranus spiniscutis (Reuter, 1881), Oncocephalus schioedtei (Reuter, 1882), Scadra annulipes (Reuter, 1881) and Ectrychotes dispar (Reuter, 1881). The result of diversity indices, Shannon-Weiner’s and Simpson’s index showed that Trail-5 (Islamabad), Taxilla (Rawalpindi), Sohawa (Jehlum) have maximum values (1.092, 0.662; 1.75, 0.82 and 1.69, 0.78) respectively. The assassin bug species i.e., Rhynocoris marginatus and R. fuscipes are found to predate maximum number of economically important pests of various crops. The diversity indexes of assassin bugs from the Pothohar region indicated that the species have uneven distribution in the five districts. The variation in richness of assassin bug population was recorded in the selected three districts of the Pothohar region. The species richness showed almost same pattern in Islamabad and Jehlum demonstrated by minute difference in Shannon’s equitability index (0.65–0.929 and 0.77–0.87) respectively.