First Report of Arthropod Fauna in Flooded Plains of Northern Patagonia (38° S, Araucania Region Chile)

Abstract

In northern Patagonia, there is a kind of water body characterized as flooded plains (vegas), resulting from heavy rains. They have submerged vegetation that sustains aquatic insects and crustaceans, including burrowing crayfish of the genus Parastacus. The object of the present study was to present the first description of the community structure of three such water bodies. The results revealed the existence of seven species in the only site with Parastacus pugnax Poeppig, 1835, whereas in the sites where P. pugnax was absent there were one and three species respectively. The niche-sharing null model revealed the absence of niche-sharing due to interspecific absence. This kind of habitat presents marked heterogeneity, attributable to specific micro-environmental variations.

Invertebrate Communities Associated to Parastacus pugnax (Decapoda, Parastacidae) Northern Patagonian Populations (38°S, Araucania, Chile): a First Exploratory Analysis

“…Th e exposed results denote new fi ndings, that confi rm the colonization of zooplanktonic cladocerans and copepods in ground waters and revealed more detailed data on invertebrate communities in comparison to the fi rst descriptions of De los Ríos-Escalante et al (2021). However, more research is needed to understand patterns in community ecology.…”

“…During the rainy season (June-August), they come to the surface or to shallow zones, and aft er the end of the rainy season, in spring, summer and autumn, individuals are hidden in deep zones of their galleries (Rudolph, 2013 a, b). Th e associated communities of the habitats are poorly studied, with the exception of native forest wetlands at 38° S, where crustaceans such as amphipod Hyalella patagonica (Cunningham, 1871), isopod Heterias exul (Mueller 1892) and decapod Aegla araucaniensis (Jara, 1980) (Correa-Araneda et al, 2017) with high aquatic insect diversity (Correa-Araneda et al, 2021) were reported as associated fauna, which would be similar to the fi rst descriptions of fl ooded plains at the same latitude ( De los Rios Escalante et al, 2021).…”

“…Data from two sites Imperialito (38°48' S; 73°04' W) and Galvarino (38°24' S; 72°47' W) were collected in August 2022, during a rural community activity of P. pugnax extraction, called "crayfi sh festival", where the individuals were collected from their galleries using manual plunger pumps (Rudolph, 2013 a, b). Water collected from these pumps was fi ltered (3 L) through a 100 m screen, this volume was chosen based on the size of the water sample taken from the hand plunger pumps and the volume of water associated to P. pugnax galleries (De los Ríos-Escalante et al, 2021). Th e collected material was fi xed with absolute ethanol, quantifi ed and identifi ed with literature descriptions (Dominguez & Fernández, 2009;Grosso & Peralta, 2009;González, 2003;Araya & Zúñiga, 1985).…”