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High Abundance of Neotropical Drosophilids (Diptera: Drosophilidae) in Four Cultivated Areas of Central Brazil

  • Ecology, Behavior and Bionomics
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Abstract

The drosophilid assemblages of four cultivated areas (soy, bean, corn, and orange plantations) grown in the core of the Neotropical region were analyzed by comparing their abundances and compositions. The collections, which were gathered using 38 banana traps, captured 12,560 drosophilids, including nine Neotropical and six exotic species. Most of the flies were collected in the bean (43%) and soy (42%) fields. The composition and relative abundance of species also varied among cultivated areas, with orange orchards presenting the highest relative abundance of exotics due to the dominance of the Afrotropical Zaprionus indianus (Gupta). Crop plantations were dominated by a Neotropical species, Drosophila cardini (Sturtevant), which has been shown to be well adapted to dry and disturbed environments. We discuss the drosophilid assemblages of the cultivated areas, comparing them with assemblages from neighbor urban and natural environments. The low drosophilid richness found in this study is similar to the richness found in urban environments and lower than the drosophilid richness of forests, supporting a pattern already known for other taxa. The high abundance of drosophilids in cultivated areas, as well as the dominance of a Neotropical species (D. cardini) in the crop assemblages, was a surprising result.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Ademar H. Isoton and Roberto C. Z. Poveda for allowing us to collect samples in his farms. We are also grateful to the Universidade de Brasília for the logistic support and to CNPq and FAP-DF for the financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ciências Biológicas–PPG Ecologia, Univ de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brasil

    PP Emerich, H Valadão, JRVP Silva & R Tidon

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  1. PP Emerich
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  2. H Valadão
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  3. JRVP Silva
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  4. R Tidon
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Correspondence to R Tidon.

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Edited by Kleber Del Claro – UFU

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Emerich, P., Valadão, H., Silva, J. et al. High Abundance of Neotropical Drosophilids (Diptera: Drosophilidae) in Four Cultivated Areas of Central Brazil. Neotrop Entomol 41, 83–88 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-011-0004-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-011-0004-x

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