Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The SISBIOTA-BRASIL was a three-year multimillion-dollar research program of the Brazilian government to document plants and animals in endangered/understudied areas and biomes in Brazil. Distributional patterns and the historical events that generated them are extensively unknown regarding Brazilian fauna and flora. This deficiency hinders the development of conservation policies and the understanding of evolutionary processes. Conservation decisions depend on precise knowledge of the taxonomy and geographic distribution of species. Given such a premise, we proposed to research the diversity of Diptera of the Brazilian western arc of Amazon, Cerrado, and Pantanal in the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Rondônia. Three important biomes of the South American continent characterize these Brazilian states: Amazon forest, Cerrado (Brazilian Savannah), and Pantanal. Besides their ecological relevance, these biomes historically lack intensive entomological surveys. Therefore, they are much underrepresented in the Brazilian natural history collections and in the scientific literature, which is further aggravated by the fact that these areas are being exponentially and rapidly converted to commercial lands. Our project involved over 90 collaborators from 24 different Brazilian institutions and one from Colombia among researchers, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students, and technicians. We processed and analyzed nearly 300,000 specimens from ~60 families of Diptera collected with a large variety of methods in the sampled areas. Here, we provide a detailed overview of the genera and species diversity of 41 families treated. Our results point to a total of 2,130 species and 514 genera compiled and identified for the three states altogether, with an increase of 41% and 29% in the numbers of species and genera known for the three states combined, respectively. Overall, the 10 most species-rich families were Tachinidae, Cecidomyiidae, Tabanidae, Psychodidae, Sarcophagidae, Stratiomyidae, Bombyliidae, Syrphidae, Tephritidae, and Asilidae. The 10 most diverse in the number of genera were Tachinidae, Stratiomyidae, Asilidae, Mycetophilidae, Syrphidae, Tabanidae, Muscidae, Dolichopodidae, Sarcophagidae, and Chloropidae. So far, 111 scientific papers were published regarding taxonomic, phylogenetic, and biogeographical aspects of the studied families, with the description of 101 new species and three new genera. We expect that additional publications will result from this investigation because several specimens are now curated and being researched by specialists.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The present contribution deals with the recognition of the type material of Melipona postica Latreille and the identity of the taxon it represents. The origin of the specimens studied by Illiger and Klug, and which Illiger later sent to Latreille, is traced to Francisco Agostinho Gomes, who collected the material in Salvador, Bahia, and sent them to the Count von Hoffmansegg, in Prussia. Based on material located at the Museum für Naturkunde, in Berlin, a lectotype is designated for Melipona postica Latreille. The specimen is redescribed and illustrated. The name Scaptotrigona xanthotricha Moure is placed as a synonym of S. postica.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT Hirtodrosophila Duda, 1923 is a worldwide genus that encompasses about 170 species. In the Neotropical Region there are records of 38 species. In this paper, we describe three new species of Neotropical Hirtodrosophila - H. pilosa n. sp., H. fluminensis n. sp. and H. brasiliensis n. sp. -, which are not assigned to any species group. The three new species can be easily distinguished from any known American species by their external morphological traits. Furthermore, we describe a female specimen, refraining from designating it as a new species because of the lack of characteristics to adequately delimit the species.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT Larvae of Hydrotaea species are facultative predators of larvae of other fly species on poultry farms, chicken feces, pig, and decaying carcasses. The Neotropical species H. albuquerquei occurs together with M. domestica in these environments and might be useful in the biological control of the latter. To verify the predatory capacity of H. albuquerquei larvae on the larvae of M. domestica, we varied the size of the larvae and the densities of the predators and prey under controlled laboratory conditions. Adults were collected from a poultry farm for the experiment, and the larvae they produced were reared in the laboratory. The second and third instar larvae of H. albuquerquei, when at higher densities, suppressed populations of house fly larvae when the latter were smaller than the former. This means that the functional response increases gradually with an increase in prey population density and predator size. In these conditions, one H. albuquerquei larva consumes up to 29 M. domestica larvae at high prey densities and could reduce 100% of the house fly population under a 50% prey density. This study confirmed a pattern previously observed in other predatory larvae and our results have implications for the biological control and integrated pest management programs of M. domestica in poultry and swine farms.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT Gall-inducing insects are highly specialized herbivores as they have the ability to control and redirect the development of host plants to obtain food and shelter. The distribution of galls on plants can be influenced by seasonality and phenological events, which determines the reproductive success of these insects. The species Manihot caerulescens Pohl (Euphorbiaceae) has a great diversity of gall-inducing insects in the Cerrado of Western Bahia. Our study aimed to (1) study the fauna associated with M. caerulescens Pohl (Euphorbiaceae) and (2) evaluate the phenological events of this host plant species. We performed gall collections between July 2018 and June 2020 and monitored 30 individuals of the host species to study the phenology in the Serra da Bandeira, Bahia, Brazil. The emerged insects in the laboratory were mounted on permanent slides and identified. We found galls on the stems, leaves and inflorescences. Stem galls were induced by lepidopterans (Alucitidae), and leaf and inflorescence galls by Iatrophobia brasiliensis Rübsaamen, 1915 (Cecidomyiidae). Further, we showed that I. brasiliensis preferentially induced galls on the leaves, however during the dry season, galls were induced on the inflorescences. Although the induction of galls on the leaves by I. brasiliensis has already been reported in the literature, here for the first time we record the presence of galls on the inflorescences induced by the same gall-inducing species. Our study constitutes an important contribution towards the knowledge of the insect-plant interaction between M. caerulescens and I. brasiliensis in the Cerrado of Bahia.