First report of Oxysternon silenus Castelnau (Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae, Phanaeini) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

SHORT COMMUNICATION

First report of Oxysternon silenus Castelnau (Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae, Phanaeini) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Bruno K. C. Filgueiras^I; Luciana Iannuzzi ^II; Fernando Z. Vaz-de-Mello^III

^IPrograma de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Animal, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, 50670-901 Recife-PE Brazil. [e-mail]

^IIDepartamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco 50670-901 Recife-PE, Brazil. [e-mail]

^IIIDepartamento de Biologia e Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, 78060-900 Cuiabá-MT, Brazil. CNPq fellow. [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

First report of Oxysternon silenus Castelnau (Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae, Phanaeini) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. This is the first record of Oxysternon silenus in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Specimens were collected in the Serra Grande landscape, municipality of Ibateguara, in Alagoas State. The samples were done from August 17 to 19, 2007 with pitfall traps. Before the present study, Oxysternon silenus had been reported predominantly in Amazonian region. The finding of this species corroborates the hypothesis of the biogeographical relationships between the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Forest.

Keywords: Atlantic Forest; biogeographical relationships; dung beetles.

RESUMO

Primeiro relato de Oxysternon silenus Castelnau (Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae, Phanaeini) na Mata Atlântica brasileira. Esse é o primeiro registro de Oxysternon silenus na Mata Atlântica brasileira. Os espécimes foram coletados em Serra Grande, município de Ibateguara, Alagoas. As coletas foram realizadas de 17 a 19 de agosto de 2007 com a utilização de armadilhas do tipo pitfall. Antes do presente estudo, Oxysternon silenus tinha sido reportada apenas na região Amazônica. O encontro dessa espécie reforça a hipótese das relações biogeográficas entre a Amazônia e a Mata Atlântica.

Palavras-Chave: Escaravelhos; Mata Atlântica; relações biogeográficas.

Oxysternon silenus Castelnau is a copro-necrophagous dung beetle species regarded as having Arnaud (2002) or not Edmonds & Zidek (2004) well defined subspecies linked to both color and geographical range. This species is widely distributed in northern and northwestern South America, extending into Central America (Edmonds & Zidek 2004). In South America it was recorded from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Peru and Venezuela, being characteristic of the Amazonian, Guyanan and Chocoan rainforests, including some penetration into the Brazilian savannah (Cerrado) region via riparian forests (Edmonds & Zidek 2004).

The study was carried out at Usina Serra Grande, a large private sugar-cane landholding in the State of Alagoas in northeastern Brazil (8°30'S, 35°50'W). The Serra Grande landscape is located within the most threatened region of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Silva & Tabarelli 2000; Lopes et al. 2009). This landscape has approximately 9000 ha of forest with a total 109 forest remnants, ranging from 1.67 to 3500 ha - all entirely surrounded by a uniform, stable sugar-cane plantation matrix (Silva & Tabarelli 2000; Santos et al. 2008). Coimbra Forest (3500 ha) is the largest and best preserved patch of forest in the region and consists of a single, non-replicated tract of forest (Oliveira et al. 2004; Santos et al. 2008).

Four females of O. silenus were collected from pitfall traps in an Atlantic Forest fragment of northeastern Brazil (Coimbra forest, Alagoas State, 09°00'12,6"S/35°51'59"W, 300 m) from August 17 to 19, 2007. It is important to point out that all four collected specimens bear the color similar to specimens belonging to the O. s. smaragdinum Olsoufieff, being completely emerald green dorsally. Those populations are in different sides of the South American continent in its widest region (and separated by more than 4600 km). Populations more closely situated in relation to the newly recorded one are all much darker than the precedent one, generally very dark to black on elytra, and are distant from the population here recorded by at least 1500 km (O. s. silenus, O. s. zagurii Arnaud, O. s. aeneum Olsoufieff). Populations from Santarém (O. s. jossi Arnaud, more than 2000 km apart) bear some uniformly metallic individuals among other black ones, but those seen by us were never green, and always much less brightly than specimens from Alagoas.

Local species composition in the sampled area is highly influenced by Amazonian components, making it very distinctive from other sectors of the Atlantic Forest (Prance 1982, 1987, 1989). Phylogenetic studies focusing on endemic species have indicated this strong biogeographical connection between the Atlantic Forest of northeastern Brazil and Amazonia occurred in several periods of the Tertiary and Quaternary (Prance 1982; Willis 1992). The strong biogeographical connection between these forests is supported by Prance (1979), who pointed out that most of the Chrysobalanaceae species (e.g., Couepia rufa Ducke, Couepia pernambucencis Prance) occurring in Atlantic Forest of northeastern Brazil have their closest relatives in Amazonia, as well as by Teixeira et al. (1986), who indicated that lowland sites in Atlantic Forest of northeastern Brazil have avifauna more closely related to Amazonian avifauna. Recently, Pinto et al. (2009) collected Evandromyia (Aldamyia) sericea (Floch & Abonnenc) (Diptera, Psychodidae, Phlebotominae) in Brazilian Atlantic Forest. The finding of this species, also found in Amazon Rainforest, corroborates the hypothesis of the phylogeographical proximity of the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Forest (Pinto et al. 2009). Thus, the presence of O. silenus is more one indicator of association between these forests. We believe that the record of O. silenus in these forests can be resulted from the fragmentation of an ancestral biota that was once widely distributed in the region. Voucher specimens have been deposited at the Entomological Collection of Mato Grosso Federal University, in Cuiabá, Brazil (CEUFMT).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Luis Antônio Bezerra and José Clodoaldo Bakker for authorizing our fieldwork at the Usina Serra Grande. We are grateful to CAPES by post-graduate support to B.K.C.F. F.Z.V.M is grateful to CNPq (Process # 304925/2010-1). This work was partly granted by FAPEMAT (447441/2009).

Received 28/5/2010;

accepted 14/4/2011

Editor: Marcela Laura Monné

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 June 2011
• Date of issue
  June 2011

History

• Accepted
  14 Apr 2011
• Received
  28 May 2010