Distribution Pattern and Climate Preferences of the Representatives of the Cosmopolitan Genus Sirthenea Spinola, 1840 (Heteroptera: Reduviidae: Peiratinae).

Dominik Chłond,Agnieszka Bugaj-Nawrocka

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0140801

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to predict, through the use of GIS tool as ecological niche modelling, potentially suitable ecological niche and defining the conditions of such niche for the representatives of the cosmopolitan genus Sirthenea. Among all known genera of the subfamily Peiratinae, only Sirthenea occurs on almost all continents and zoogeographical regions. Our research was based on 521 unique occurrence localities and a set of environmental variables covering the whole world. Based on occurrence localities, as well as climatic variables, digital elevation model, terrestrial ecoregions and biomes, information about the ecological preferences is given. Potentially useful ecological niches were modelled using Maxent software, which allowed for the creation of a map of the potential distribution and for determining climatic preferences. An analysis of climatic preferences suggested that the representatives of the genus were linked mainly to the tropical and temperate climates. An analysis of ecoregions also showed that they preferred areas with tree vegetation like tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests biomes as well as temperate broadleaf and mixed forest biomes. Therefore, on the basis of the museum data on the species occurrence and ecological niche modelling method, we provided new and valuable information on the potentially suitable habitat and the possible range of distribution of the genus Sirthenea along with its climatic preferences.

Highlights

The area under the ROC curve (AUC) values for Africa, Americas, Asia, Oceania and the whole world are given, respectively: 0.898, 0.874 (SD = 0.040, i.e. 4.0%), 0.916 (SD = 0.036, i.e. 3.6%) and 0.878 (SD = 0.031, i.e. 3.1%). Both the training and test AUC values of our models were significantly different from random
One of the most important issues concerning the genus Sirthenea is its presence in almost all zoogeographical regions of our planet
This type of research on the representatives of the subfamily Peiratinae occurring in the Neotropical region has been published by Coscarón & Morrone [69]

Summary

Introduction

Peiratinae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae) is one of the medium-sized subfamily of assassin bugs (Reduviidae), with 30 known genera [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] consisting of various sized predators with almost unknown biology.Genus Sirthenea was established by Spinola [11] as a monotypic genus based on Reduvius carinatus Fabricius, 1798 [12] (placed in genus Rasahus by Amyot and Serville [13]), and it has only one known subgenus Monogmus described by Horváth [14] and distributedPLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0140801 October 23, 2015Distribution of the Cosmopolitan Genus Sirthenea exclusively on Madagascar. Peiratinae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae) is one of the medium-sized subfamily of assassin bugs (Reduviidae), with 30 known genera [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] consisting of various sized predators with almost unknown biology. Genus Sirthenea was established by Spinola [11] as a monotypic genus based on Reduvius carinatus Fabricius, 1798 [12] (placed in genus Rasahus by Amyot and Serville [13]), and it has only one known subgenus Monogmus described by Horváth [14] and distributed. The distribution of Peiratinae is limited to select zoogeographical regions, e.g., primarily confined to tropical areas (S1 Appendix). Among all known genera of the subfamily Peiratinae, only Sirthenea occurs on almost all continents and zoogeographical regions (S1 Appendix) and is, an exception within the Peiratinae

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Conclusion