There are 176 species representing eight genera and two families of Plecoptera known from Brazil. However, only ten of these species are recorded from the State of Bahia. In this study, an inventory of stoneflies from the southern region of Bahia State, Serra Bonita, including the municipality of Camacan, was undertaken from 2007-2012. Stoneflies were collected using UV light pan traps, Malaise traps, and aerial nets. One new gripopterygid species, Tupiperla bispoi n. sp., is described and illustrated. Four genera representing ten other species are recorded: Gripopteryx cancellata, G. clemira, G. garbei, G. pinima, Paragripopteryx sp., and Tupiperla tessellata (Gripopterygidae), Kempnyia alterosarum, K. gracilenta, K. jatim, and K. neotropica (Perlidae). With the present study, the number of known species of stoneflies recorded from Bahia State is 17, ten of these recorded from the Serra Bonita region.
The Rensch's rule predicts that male-biased sexual size dimorphism (SSD) increases with body size, while female-biased SSD (FBSSD) decreases. In insects, many groups follow this rule, but the evidence suggests that it is taxon dependent and that the inverse of the rule can occur in species with FBSSD. Therefore, we conducted this study with Gripopterygidae stoneflies (Plecoptera) to describe their pattern of SSD and determine if they follow the Rensch's rule. Our data suggest that stoneflies exhibit FBSSD and do not follow the rule, but a reverse pattern. Our results corroborate other studies that suggest that the Rensch's rule is taxon based and that groups with FBSSD usually fail to obey the rule.
The continuous pursuit of welfare and economic development through the exploitation of natural resources by human societies consequently resulted in the ongoing process of climate change. Changes in the distribution of species towards the planet's poles and mountain tops are some of the expected to biological consequences of this process. Here, we assessed the potential effects of future climate change on four cool-adapted Gripopterygidae (Insecta: Plecoptera) species [Gripopteryx garbei Navás 1936, G. cancellata (Pictet 1841), Tupiperla gracilis (Burmeister 1839), and T. tessellata (Brauer 1866)] from Southeastern Brazilian Atlantic forest. As species adapted to cold conditions, in the future scenarios of climate change, we expected these organisms to shrink/change their distributions ranges towards areas with suitable climatic conditions in Southern Brazilian regions, when compared with their predicted distributions in present climatic conditions. We used seven principal components derived from 19 environmental variables from Worldclim database for the present scenario and also seven principal components obtained from 17 different Atmosphere-Ocean Global Circulation Models (AOGCMs), considering the most severe emission scenario for green-house gases to predict the species' distributions. Depending on the climatic scenario considered, there were polewards distribution range changes of the species. Additionally, we also observed an important decrease in the amount of protected modeled range for the species in the future scenarios. Considering that this Brazilian region may become hotter in the future and have its precipitation regime changed, as observed in the severe 2013-2014 drought, we believe these species adapted to high altitudes will be severely threatened in the future.
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