Abstract
Land planarians are an interesting group of free-living flatworms that can be useful as bioindicators because of their high sensitivity to environmental changes and low dispersal capacity. In this study, we describe and compare assemblages of land planarians from areas with different conservation degrees of the Interior Atlantic Forest (Misiones, Argentina), and assess factors that could be related to their abundance and richness. Eight sites were tracked in search of land planarians in Reserva de Vida Silvestre Urugua-í (RVSU) and Campo Anexo Manuel Belgrano (CAMB). Diurnal and nocturnal surveys were performed in each site along nine sampling campaigns. We collected 237 individuals belonging to 18 species of the subfamily Geoplaninae. All sites were dominated by Geoplana sp. 1 and Pasipha hauseri. The richness estimators showed that there would be more species in RVSU than in CAMB. The abundance and richness of land planarians was high during the night and after rainfalls, suggesting an increased activity of flatworms under such conditions. The abundance and richness of land planarians were also related to the conservation condition of the sites. Disturbed sites showed less abundance and richness, and were segregated from non-disturbed ones by nmMDS analysis. Beta diversity between sites was higher than expected, indicating that the species turnover between sites contributed more to the total richness (gamma diversity) than the alpha diversity.
Highlights
Land planarians (Platyhelminthes: Geoplanidae) successfully colonized the terrestrial environment millions of years ago [1]
We found 237 individuals (150 in Reserva de Vida Silvestre Urugua- ́ı (RVSU) and 87 in Campo Anexo Manuel Belgrano (CAMB)), representing 18 land planarian species distributed in six genera of the subfamily Geoplaninae
With Chao 1, which is sensitive to rare species [39], we reached about 70% of the species inventory in RVSU and almost 90% in CAMB
Summary
Land planarians (Platyhelminthes: Geoplanidae) successfully colonized the terrestrial environment millions of years ago [1]. They have not been able to develop mechanisms for water conservation and are unable to withstand desiccation [2]. Land planarians are ‘top predators’ of the soil fauna [3,4] They can feed on a wide range of soil invertebrates, mainly earthworms, snails, lugs, leeches, insects, isopods, and arachnids [5,6,7,8,9,10]. They may be good environmental indicators, in tropical and subtropical rainforests, where they are abundant [3]
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