Diversity of Beetles (Coleoptera) in an Inter-Andean Dry Tropical Forest in Ecuador
Abstract and Figures
A pesar de la alta biodiversidad y endemismo en el Bosque Seco Tropical Interandino (BSTI), parte del Bosque Seco Tropical Estacional (BSTE), el estudio de la entomofauna en éste hábitat ha sido relegado. Este estudio tuvo como objetivo reducir la brecha de conocimiento respecto a la diversidad de escarabajos en un BSTI ecuatoriano, el Bosque Protector Jerusalém (BPJ). El muestreo reveló 568 especímenes, representando 66 especies, siendo Chrysomelidae, Curculionidae y Coccinelidae las familias más abundantes. El índice de Simpson reveló una alta diversidad, con cinco especies dominantes que contribuyeron significativamente a la abundancia. La presencia de “singletons” y “doubletons” dio indicios de una comunidad rica y compleja. La curva de acumulación de especies no alcanzó una asíntota, y el índice Chao 1 estimó un total de 105 especies, sugiriendo una mayor diversidad por descubrir. Se encontraron varios taxones potencialmente nuevos, incluido un nuevo registro de género para el país para Psomus Casey (Curculionidae), acentuando la necesidad de más investigaciones taxonómicas en este ecosistema. Además, se hallaron algunas especies introducidas, resaltando la influencia del paisaje periurbano circundante. Este estudio proporciona una base para futuros estudios e iniciativas de conservación, además señala la importancia de estudiar taxones sensibles como los escarabajos para comprender y proteger este ecosistema amenazado.
Figures - uploaded by Gissela De la Cadena
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Gissela De la Cadena
Content may be subject to copyright.
... These forests harbor a high diversity; however, there are multiple threats, including selective logging, habitat degradation, forest fragmentation, fires, land conversion for agriculture and cattle ranching [3]. In these forests, unique flora and fauna thrive and they play an essential role in biological processes and conservation [4,5]. ...
Epiphytic organisms are characteristic elements of the Andean dry forest, playing a crucial role in ecosystem diversity and functionality, but they are threatened by deforestation-related factors. The diversity of epiphytic lichens and bryophytes was recorded in the Pisaca Reserve, which has an artificial pond locally known as “Laguna Pisaca”, serving as a critical micro-watershed. This pond provides water services to the city of Catacocha, motivating local communities to protect its biodiversity. In each zone (low, middle and high), 10 plots of 5 × 5 m were established, where the presence and coverage of lichens and bryophytes were sampled in 4 trees per plot (120 trees). Richness and diversity (Shannon–Weaver and Simpson indices) were calculated. Generalized linear models (GLM) were used to analyze the effect of the zone on richness and diversity, and multivariate analysis was used to analyze species composition. A total of 90 species were recorded (65 lichens and 25 bryophytes), distributed in three zones: 74 in the high, 67 in the low and 41 in the middle zone. Species richness and composition showed significant variations in relation to the three zones, influenced by forest structure, small altitudinal changes and forests disturbance. The forests of the Pisaca Reserve harbor a great diversity of lichens and epiphytic bryophytes, which serve as refuges for biodiversity in the Andean dry montane forest of South Ecuador.
Emerging evidence suggests that insect populations may be declining at local and global scales, threatening the sustainability of the ecosystem services that insects provide. Insect declines are of particular concern in the Neotropics, which holds several of the world’s hotspots of insect endemism and diversity. Conservation policies are one way to prevent and mitigate insect declines, yet these policies are usually biased toward vertebrate species. Here, we outline some key policy instruments for biodiversity conservation in the Neotropics and discuss their potential contribution and shortcomings for insect biodiversity conservation. These include species-specific action policies, protected areas and Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), sectoral policies, biodiversity offsetting, market-based mechanisms, and the international policy instruments that underpin these efforts. We highlight that although these policies can potentially benefit insect biodiversity indirectly, there are avenues in which we could better incorporate the specific needs of insects into policy to mitigate the declines mentioned above. We propose several areas of improvement. Firstly, evaluating the extinction risk of more Neotropical insects to better target at-risk species with species-specific policies and conserve their habitats within area-based interventions. Secondly, alternative pest control methods and enhanced monitoring of insects in a range of land-based production sectors. Thirdly, incorporating measurable and achievable insect conservation targets into international policies and conventions. Finally, we emphasise the important roles of community engagement and enhanced public awareness in achieving these improvements to insect conservation policies.
Insects are the most biodiverse multicellular organisms, with most of this diversity in the tropics. Butterflies follow the same pattern, with ~ 90% of species from the tropics. Anthropogenic stressors such as habitat loss and pollution are driving butterfly declines globally, with many rare tropical species likely extinct before discovery. Citizen science is a powerful tool for supplementing professional monitoring of tropical butterfly biodiversity and better understanding butterfly biogeography, especially in remote regions or on private land. We created a ‘project’ on the online biodiversity citizen science platform iNaturalist to collect the first known photographs of rare taxa. Almost 20% of the project’s records are butterflies, with observations of 406 butterflies for which the uploaded images are the first known photographs of living specimens. Over 90% of these are from the tropics, with Indonesia, Brazil and Peru the most-represented countries, and Theclinae, Riodininae and Satyrinae the most observed subfamilies. The project’s success has been driven by a strong synergistic community of experts and amateur naturalists from around the globe that facilitates real-time discussions and the identification of rare and undescribed taxa. Implications for insect conservation: Our project highlights the power of iNaturalist for documenting the occurrence of rare tropical butterflies in typically poorly monitored regions such as Papua and remote areas of South America. These data points provide the stepping stones for a better understanding of tropical butterfly biogeography, and have the potential to inform conservation and management of poorly known species. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Canopy fogging was used to sample the diversity of bark and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Scolytinae) at two western Amazonian rainforest sites in Ecuador. Sampling was conducted by Dr Terry Erwin and assistants from 1994–2006 and yielded 1158 samples containing 2500 scolytine specimens representing more than 400 morphospecies. Here, we analyze a subset of these data representing two ecological groups: true bark beetles (52 morphospecies) and ambrosia beetles (69 morphospecies). A high percentage of these taxa occurred as singletons and doubletons and their species accumulation curves did not reach an asymptote. Diversity estimates placed the total scolytine species richness for this taxon subset present at the two sites between 260 and 323 species. The α-diversity was remarkably high at each site, while the apparently high β-diversity was an artifact of undersampling, as shown by a Monte Carlo resampling analysis. This study demonstrates the utility of canopy fogging for the discovery of new scolytine taxa and for approximate diversity assessment, but a substantially greater sampling effort would be needed for conclusive alpha as well as beta diversity estimates.
We were fortunate to have known Terry not only as an excellent professional coleopterist and an enthusiastic colleague, but also as a good friend. Entomological meetings for us came with an evening supper or two with Terry and the kind of laid-back personal catch-up that happens only among friends with long-term interest in each other’s lives. Through our connections with the University of Alberta and George Ball we were also happy members of Terry’s basal academic family. While we will join the rest of a broader scientific community in missing his presence in development of ideas about beetles, biodiversity and evolution, the kinds of work that Terry promoted will continue. We will, of course, be interested in following how the understanding of carabids and nature develops further from Terry’s contributions. This will most certainly continue to grow, partly through the efforts of those that he has influenced. Every practicing research scientist has some role to play in the great chain of discovery, and much of this volume is meant to celebrate Terry’s contributions and showcase how they have influenced the work of others.
Our own more enduring sense of loss will flow from the personal interactions with Terry that were generally part of our timelines. Despite the sadness associated with such loss, our memories of interactions with Terry underscore a sense of joy and gratefulness for having connected with him interpersonally in life. Given Terry’s affable and social nature, many others will have such memories. Thus, when Lyubomir Penev asked us to coordinate a selection of ‘memories’ for this memorial volume, we were happy to undertake the task and gather together a selection of memories of our friend, Terry Erwin. What follows is a series of recollections by people who knew and worked with him from a number of perspectives during a broad range of his academic career.
We are most grateful to those who have been willing to share their reflections. These are presented here as a way of reaching beyond Terry’s considerable scientific influence to also preserve some sense of his influence on the lives of people, and the ways in which he encouraged and inspired them. We thank all the contributors for their efforts and Diane Hollingdale for work to bring the included photographs to the best possible publication standard.
John R. Spence
Edmonton, Alberta
David H. Kavanaugh
San Francisco, California
David R. Maddison
Corvallis, Oregon
Fast and accurate taxonomic identification of invasive trans-located ladybird beetle species is essential to prevent significant impacts on biological communities, ecosystem functions, and agricultural business economics. Therefore, in this work we propose a two-step automatic detector for ladybird beetles in random environment images as the first stage towards an automated classification system. First, an image processing module composed of a saliency map representation, simple linear iterative clustering superpixels segmentation, and active contour methods allowed us to generate bounding boxes with possible ladybird beetles locations within an image. Subsequently, a deep convolutional neural network-based classifier selects only the bounding boxes with ladybird beetles as the final output. This method was validated on a 2, 300 ladybird beetle image data set from Ecuador and Colombia obtained from the iNaturalist project. The proposed approach achieved an accuracy score of 92% and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.977 for the bounding box generation and classification tasks. These successful results enable the proposed detector as a valuable tool for helping specialists in the ladybird beetle detection problem.
Tropical dry forests are an intricate ecosystem with special adaptations to periods of drought. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are essential for plant survival in all terrestrial ecosystems but might be of even greater importance in dry forests as plant growth is limited due to nutrient and water deficiency during the dry season. Tropical dry forests in Ecuador are highly endangered, but studies about AMF communities are scarce. We investigated the AMF community of a premontane semi-deciduous dry forest in South Ecuador during the dry season. We estimated AMF diversity, distribution, and composition of the study site based on operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and compared the results to those from the tropical montane rainforest and páramo in South Ecuador. OTU delimitation was based on part of the small ribosomal subunit obtained by cloning and Sanger sequencing. Nearly all OTUs were Glomeraceae. The four frequent OTUs were Glomus , and comparison with the MaarjAM database revealed these to be globally distributed with a wide range of ecological adaptations. Several OTUs are shared with virtual taxa from dry forests in Africa. Ordination analysis of AMF communities from the tropical dry and montane rainforests in South Ecuador revealed a unique AMF community in the dry forest with only few overlapping OTUs. Most OTUs that were found in both dry and rainforests and on the two continents were globally distributed Glomus .
While several recent studies have focused on global insect population trends, all are limited in either space or taxonomic scope. As global monitoring programs for insects are currently not implemented, inherent biases exist within most data. Expert opinion, which is often widely available, proves to be a valuable tool where hard data are limited. Our aim is to use global expert opinion to provide insights on the root causes of potential insect declines worldwide, as well as on effective conservation strategies that could mitigate insect biodiversity loss. We obtained 753 responses from 413 respondents with a wide variety of spatial and taxonomic expertise. The most relevant threats identified through the survey were agriculture and climate change, followed by pollution, while land management and land protection were recognized as the most significant conservation measures. Nevertheless, there were differences across regions and insect groups, reflecting the variability within the most diverse class of eukaryotic organisms on our planet. Lack of answers for certain biogeographic regions or taxa also reflects the need for research in less investigated settings. Our results provide a novel step toward understanding global threats and conservation measures for insects.
It is largely unknown how South America's Andean forests affect the global carbon cycle, and thus regulate climate change. Here, we measure aboveground carbon dynamics over the past two decades in 119 monitoring plots spanning a range of >3000 m elevation across the subtropical and tropical Andes. Our results show that Andean forests act as strong sinks for aboveground carbon (0.67 ± 0.08 Mg C ha −1 y −1) and have a high potential to serve as future carbon refuges. Aboveground carbon dynamics of Andean forests are driven by abiotic and biotic factors, such as climate and size-dependent mortality of trees. The increasing aboveground carbon stocks offset the estimated C emissions due to deforestation between 2003 and 2014, resulting in a net total uptake of 0.027 Pg C y −1. Reducing deforestation will increase Andean aboveground carbon stocks, facilitate upward species migrations, and allow for recovery of biomass losses due to climate change.
Seven new species of Cerambycidae from Ecuador, belonging to Acanthocinini, are described: Lepturges (Lepturges) onorei n. sp., Nealcidion ghiae n. sp., Periestola mazai n. sp., Tropanisopodus kozlovi n. sp. (Colombia and Ecuador), Tropidozineus salazarae n. sp., Urgleptes keili n. sp., and Urgleptes navarretei n. sp. The females of Nealcidion
femoratum (Monné & Martins, 1976) (with two new province records) and Paranisopodus paradoxus Monné & Martins, 1976 are described. Considerations concerning Periestola Breuning, 1943 are presented. Periestola armata (Monné & Delfino, 1986) n. comb., previously placed in Nealcidion Monné, 1977, is proposed. Notes on Gracililamia ecuadorensis Breuning, 1961 (Parmenini) and the relationships to this genus are discussed. It is concluded that Huedepohlia pisciformis Martins & Galileo, 1989 is a junior synonym of Gracilimalia ecuadorensis and, consequently, Huedepohlia Martins & Galileo, 1989 becomes synonym of Gracililamia Breuning, 1961. Additionally, Gracililamia is transferred from Parmenini to Forsteriini.