Integrating ecological and biogeographical tools for the identification of conservation areas of the Atlantic Forest based on Heteroptera

MINGHETTI, EUGENIA; DELLAPÉ, PABLO M.; MONTEMAYOR, SARA I.

Workshop; V Workshop Latinoamericano de Heteroptera; 2022

The heteroptera are extremely diverse, and exhibit an extraordinary morphological and ecological diversity, with a history dating back to the end of the Carboniferous. Therefore, they provide an excellent opportunity for addressing several ecological and evolutionary questions. Many have narrow ecological requirements acting as sensitive indicators of ecological conditions and of how the human activities disturbed ecosystems. The identification of areas that are centers of endemism, that have a high species richness, and that have also sheltered numerous species during past climate change or that may play a similar role in the future, i. e. Refugia, are key from a conservation management perspective. Refugia are expected to have higher species richness, a relatively higher number of endemic species and more ancient lineages than the neighboring landscape. In the search of such areas, an ecological-biogeographical comprehensive study was performed based on the known distribution of species of the Neella Reuter- Neoneella Costa Lima complex as part of EM PhD work. To recognize these areas ecological and biogeographical tools such as Species Distributional Models (SDM) and analyses of endemicity (NVDM) and of species richness (through Tombio in QGis) were used. Despite the low number of species used to perform the study, the Brazilian Atlantic Forest was recovered as an area with high species richness and as an endemism centre (this region has also been recovered as a center of endemism for many other taxa such as bees, birds, opilions, plants and rodents). Most of the species studied are known from few specimens and geographical records, so robust SDM could not be built to investigate if this center of endemism could have act or if it could act as a refugia. Studies based on other taxa recovered two other endemic centers in the Atlantic Forest separated by the “Río Doce” barrier. In our study these centers were not recovered possibly due to lack of sampling; or because the species analyzed established in the region after the origin of the “Río Doce” barrier; or because regions in the north and south of the “Río Doce” are not ecologically suitable for the species. We would like to invitecolleagues to share their data and participate in a collaborative and integrative study of the Heteroptera of the Atlantic Forest aiming to better understand their ecology and biogeographical history.