Abstract
Tropical invertebrates, such as the ichneumonids of tropical forests, are poorly known. Here, we report the first results of extensive sampling at Kibale National Park, Uganda, by providing some of the first tropical ecological data for the ichneumonid subfamily Rhyssinae. We sampled ichneumonids with 34 Malaise traps for a year in 10 sites, in habitats ranging from primary forest to farmland. We also gathered weather and vegetation data. The total sampling effort was 373 trap months and we caught 444 rhyssines in six species. We caught the most rhyssines in dry weather, and towards the end of the sampling year. The rhyssines showed a clear preference for decaying logs and for primary forest. We fitted a model which can be used to predict future catches at the site, and draw conclusions on when rhyssines emerge and on their adult lifespan. Sampling extensively gave us a wealth of ecological data on a poorly known parasitoid wasp subfamily. We recommend that future tropical sampling collect ecological data, and that existing data from previous large-scale surveys be used for ecological analyses.
Highlights
Our planet is inhabited by millions of species, which are distributed unevenly in different latitudes and habitats
We modelled the effect of four ecological variables on expected rhyssine catches
The four ecological variables of date, rainfall, amount of decaying wood and forest type affected the number of rhyssine adults caught by Malaise traps
Summary
Our planet is inhabited by millions of species, which are distributed unevenly in different latitudes and habitats. The global distribution of this species richness follows regular patterns, but describing these patterns—let alone explaining the mechanisms behind them—is only possible if we know much royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R. More about the species that inhabit our planet. Such knowledge includes data on species 2 distributions, and on the ecology of the species, so that the observed distributions can be explained. Biodiversity is so undersampled that most terrestrial animal species have not even been discovered [1]. Tropical arthropods are especially poorly known (e.g. [2,3])
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