Abstract
The family Talitridae Rafinesque, 1815 is the only group, among the amphipods, that colonized the terrestrial environment, and more than half of its species live in tropical and subtropical forests. Nowadays, the family has approximately 270 species described in 64 genera. Leaf litter samples from Atlantic forests and urban areas of the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Parana, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul, provided material to redescribe the two terrestrial species known to Brazil, Talitroides alluaudi (Chevreux, 1896) and Talitroides topitotum (Burt, 1934), and enlarge their known distribution. These species have a worldwide distribution, as they are commonly dispersed in a synanthropic way. Talitroides topitotum seems to be well established in Brazilian Atlantic forests: 96% of the 1787 individuals examined (51 samples) corresponded to this species. Also, females dominated the samples and only six males were found: four from T. alluaudi and two from T. topitotum. A detailed comparison of these two species, as well as their geographical distribution, is given.
Highlights
The family Talitridae Rafinesque, 1815 is the only group, among the amphipods, that colonized the terrestrial environment, and more than half of its species live in tropical and subtropical forests
During the past 10 years many species and genera have been erected for the family Talitridae and nowadays there are approximately 270 species described in 64 genera (Horton and De Broyer, 2015), with more than half of these species found in forests, indicating a strong adaptive radiation of the group in the terrestrial habitat (Bousfield, 1984)
Part of the collection of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) was legged to the MNRJ, which received a MNRJ number, the corresponding UFRGS catalog numbers are given in parenthesis
Summary
Sampling in the Atlantic forest litter and urban areas of the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul provided material to redescribe and enlarge the distribution of the two terrestrial species previously known in Brazil: T. alluaudi and T. topitotum. Detailed comparison between these two species with comments on its distribution is given
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