Aquatic Insects from the Caatinga: checklists and diversity assessments of Ubajara (Ceará State) and Sete Cidades (Piauí State) National Parks, Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

BackgroundDiversity and distribution of Neotropical aquatic insects is still poorly known, with many species to be recorded and many others to be described, due to the small number of taxonomists and sparse faunistic studies. This knowledge is especially poor in the Caatinga Domain in Northeastern Brazil, even though, this region may have played an important historical role in the spatial evolution of faunas of forested areas in northern South America.New informationAquatic insect checklists of 96 species from Parque Nacional de Ubajara (Ceará State, Brazil) and 112 species from Parque Nacional de Sete Cidades (Piauí State, Brazil) are presented, representing the following taxa: Elmidae, Epimetopidae, Hydrophilidae, and Torridincolidae (Coleoptera), Hemerodromiinae (Diptera: Empididae), Ephemeroptera, Gerromorpha and Nepomorpha (Hemiptera), Odonata, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera. Because of the scarce number of biological inventories in Northeastern Brazil, several new distributional records (of species, genera, and families) for Brazil, Northeastern Brazil, and Ceará and Piauí states are provided. In addition, several undescribed species were detected, being 26 from Ubajara and 20 from Sete Cidades. Results represent a significant increase to the known fauna of these states, ranging from 13%-70% increase for Ceará and 41% to 91% increase for Piauí. Although both parks are relatively close to each other and within the Caatinga domain, their aquatic fauna display a very high complementarity (89% species), possibly due to structural differences of water bodies sampled in each park. Rarefaction curves based on quantitative light trap samples suggest a much higher expected species richness of aquatic insects at Sete Cidades than at Ubajara National Park. Discussion on biogeographical affinities of this sample of the Caatinga fauna is provided.

Checklist and new records of Notonectidae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Nepomorpha) from Goiás, Brazil

“…Truxal, 1953 Distribution in Brazil. Northeast (PI), Central-West (GO) and Southeast regions (MG) (Truxal 1957;Nieser and Melo 1997;Vianna and Melo 2003;Melo and Nieser 2004;taKiya et al 2016). (Figure 2).…”

Social wasps (Vespidae: Polistinae) from two National Parks of the Caatinga Biome, in Brazil

“…A better detail of the study area and the methods used, can be found in the study of Takiya et al (2016).…”

Preliminary dragonfly (Odonata) species list from the Pampa biome in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, with ecological notes for 19 new records for the State

“…Some of them were found away from the water. This species has records from Panama, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, French Guiana, Guyana, Surinam, Bolivia, Paraguay, and from Brazil it has been recorded in BA, ES, MG and RJ (Costa et al 2000) and AM, CE, MS, PA and PI (Takiya et al 2016). …”

“…It was mostly found in small streams flowing in open/field areas. According to Takiya et al (2016), this species was previously recorded for Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, and in Brazil for CE, TO, MT, GO, MG, MS, ES, SP and RJ.…”

“…Our specimen was caught perching on twigs in a shaded marginal zone close to the water. The distribution records for this species, according to Takiya et al (2016), are from Mexico, Panama, Trinindad and Tobago, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil: AM, BA, CE, ES, GO, MG, MS, MT, PA, PE, RJ, SC and SP.…”