author(s)
J Alfred Daniel and K Ramaraju

abstract
To explore the Chacididae fauna of rice ecosystems of Tamil Nadu, surveys were conducted from August 2015 to January 2016 in three rice growing zones viz., Western Zone, Cauvery Delta Zone and High Rainfall Zone. The study recorded a total of 179 individuals that represents 4 subfamilies, 9 genera and 12 species. The species diversity, richness, evenness as well as beta diversity were computed for the three zones and it was concluded that all the indices viz., Simpson’s Index, Shannon-Wiener Index, Margalef index, Pielou’s index indicated that the Cauvery delta zone was the most diverse zone among the three zones that are surveyed, while High Rainfall Zone was found to be the least diverse zone. But interestingly, least number of individuals (16 individuals belonging to 08 species) were only collected from Cauvery Delta Zone and Maximum number of individuals (142 individual belonging to a species) were collected from High Rainfall Zone.