Insect biodiversity in an Amazon tropical forest: species richness, vertical structure and faunistic turnover

Abstract

This project intends to answer complex questions about the composition and spatial structure of insect biodiversity in an Amazon rainforest: (1) how many species are there of the Hexapoda fauna in a tropical rainforest location; (2) what are the vertical distribution patterns of species richness and abundance indifferent insect orders in a tropical forest; (3) what is the percentage of insect species that are only present in the upper strata, that is, that are not collected at ground level in a tropical forest; (4) what is the composition of the taxonomic groups of insects in the canopy; (5) which are the guilds in the vertical structure of a tropical forest and how are they vertically organized in different orders of Hexapoda; (6) what are the seasonal patterns of different Hexapoda groups; (7) what is the bias of Malaise traps in measuring the real diversity of insect species in a forest location; (8) what are the vertical migration patterns of insect fauna throughout the day indifferent groups of insects; (9) what is the faunal turnover between interfluves in the Amazon in different groups of insects; (10) how was the evolution of the insect fauna along the Late Cretaceous and Late Cenozoicas the angiosperm forests themselves emerged. To answer these questions the project will collect over one million specimens of insects at a tower located in the Biological Reserve of the Experimental Station of Tropical Forestry (EEST), INPA, access road ZF2, north of Manaus, using various techniques of active and passive collecting, in addition to collecting in Novo Airão (west of Rio Negro) and Careiro Castanho (south of Rio Solimões). Most specimens will be collected at five strata inside the forest (0m, 8m, 16m, 24m and 32m) using a 53 m tower inside the EEST. We estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 insects will be sequenced individually for the MTCO1 gene (COI or COX1), that may correspond to over 25,000 species of more than 450insect families. Sampling over 14 months should allow the construction of rarefaction curves to estimate the actual number of species. The project should generate, in addition to academic publications, innovation and patented protocols for a startup, with laboratory models of different sizes that access, with low cost and high precision, problems of biodiversity in natural environments and problems of applied entomology. More than400, articles are expected to be published in taxonomy journals and more than 25 articles in high impact journals, of a team gathering over 250 researchers from Brazil and different other countries. (AU)