Abstract
The composition and potential hosts of mycophagous Drosophilidae from a section of the Brazilian Amazon forest in the Caxiuanã National forest were investigated. Sampling was performed in three different periods at long the wet season (January (beginning) and July (end) 2013 and May (middle) 2014). The samples were collected from existing trails by actively searching for fungal fruiting bodies where Drosophilidae were present. We present composition and richness analysis over two years of sampling sampling Drosophilidae and Fungi. We evaluate sampling completeness using asymptotic species richness estimators. Out of 159 fruiting body samples and 64 fungal species, 5,124 drosophilids belonging to 55 species and 5 genera were collected. The mycophagous Drosophilidae richness values estimated by Jackknife 1 and Bootstrap were 69 and 61, respectively. The estimated fly richness correlated positively with fungal richness and abundance. Among the Drosophilidae species identified in this study, approximately 5% represent new occurrences for Brazil and 56% represent new species. Four genera belonging to the Zygothrica genus group are found in the Amazon region, and these genera represent 80% of the fungus-associated fauna known to date for the tropics. In conclusion, our results show that the fungal richness and abundance were the factors that determined the high diversity of mycophagous Drosophilidae.
Highlights
Community ecology aims to understand species abundance and distribution, which depend on biotic and abiotic variables (Diamond, 1986).One of the main challenges in the study of communities is the appropriate delimitation of a community, which is necessary to understand the processes that condition a given group of organisms
The richness values estimated by Jackknife 1 and Bootstrap were 69 and 61 mycophagous Drosophilidae species, respectively, for the 159 fruiting bodies observed
The present study represents the largest survey of mycophagous Drosophilidae and their potential hosts in the Brazilian Amazon forest
Summary
Community ecology aims to understand species abundance and distribution, which depend on biotic and abiotic variables (Diamond, 1986). One of the main challenges in the study of communities is the appropriate delimitation of a community, which is necessary to understand the processes that condition a given group of organisms. One way of facilitating the understanding of community organization processes is to focus on a group of species. One way to select a reference group is to focus on the guilds. Guilds are defined as groups of organisms that use same resource category (Root, 1967; Fauth et al, 1996; Magurran, 2011), and the species can or not be phylogenetically related (Magurran, 2011).
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