Abstract
Coleoptera order in Brazil presents 105 families with approximately 28,000 species. The life cycle and diversity of Coleoptera are strongly influenced by climate and vegetation. The objective of this study was to evaluate the seasonality and distribution of Coleoptera families in an area of the Cerrado in the Federal District (DF) of Brazil. The insects were collected monthly, between June 2015 and May 2016, using a light trap activated only in nights with a new moon, in an area of cerrado sensu stricto in Planaltina/DF, Brazil. The data were correlated with climatic variables. A total of 21,100 Coleoptera specimens belonging to 34 families were collected, with Melolonthidae (n = 11,075), Carabidae (n = 2,522), Scarabaeidae (n = 2,506), Bostrichidae (n = 1,196), and Chrysomelidae (n = 1,086) being the most abundant. Coleoptera were significantly more abundant in the first half of the rainy season. There was a significant and positive correlation between the abundance of Coleoptera and the climatic variables temperature and precipitation. The data presented in this study are related to an atypical year under the strong influence of the El Niño phenomenon, which may influence the abundance of Coleoptera. Circular analysis revealed that Coleoptera, and the most abundant families, presented seasonality throughout the year with a grouped distribution at the beginning of the rainy season (October to December). This study demonstrates that the richness and abundance of the Coleoptera order, in the Cerrado, is strongly influenced by the characteristic climatic seasons of the biome.
Highlights
Regarding the distribution of families throughout the year, it was observed that Melyridae was not recorded in the rainy period and Cantharidae, Erotylidae, Geotrupidae, Histeridae, Mordellidae, Phengodidae, Rhysodidae, and Trogidae were not recorded during the dry period (Table 1)
Melolonthidae was the most abundant family in the rainy period (55.3% of Coleoptera collected during the rainy period) and Scarabaeidae was the most abundant in the dry period (28.6% of Coleoptera collected during the dry period)
Bars followed by different letters, for the number of species and for the number of families, differ significantly by Wilcoxon-Mann
Summary
The Cerrado, the second largest Brazilian biome, is one of the most distinctive in terms of climatic characteristics, with a bimodal distribution of rainfall; there is a rainy period (October-March), during which approximately 87% of annual precipitation falls, and a welldefined dry season (April-September) (Silva et al, 2008). This variable has been identified as determining the seasonality observed in insect populations in this biome. The first rains occur in September and October of each year, seeming to be the trigger for most species to resume their activity (Oliveira and Frizzas, 2008, 2013, 2019; Evangelista Neto et al., 2018; Frizzas et al, 2020)
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