Diversidade de entomobryoidea (Arthropoda: Collembola) epiedáficos da Floresta Nacional dos Palmares, estado do Piauí

Abstract

Collembola are small hexapod terrestrial arthropods, and playing an important role in the nutrient cycling and soil conditioning processes. The goals of this work are to estimate the diversity of Entomobryoidea (Arthropoda: Collembola) at the site, and the main environmental variables that influence this diversity, provide the first list of Collembola species for the studied area and expand the occurrence records of species in the Caatinga-Cerrado transition region. To capture the specimens, we used pitfall traps that consisted of 400 ML disposable cups, containing 70% ethanol and covered with a disposable dish. The traps remained exposed for 48 hours, arranged in a 100 m transect, containing 11 sampling points. At each sampling point, 3 traps were installed. Air and soil temperature, canopy coverage, soil moisture and leaf litter height were measured. The specimens were sorted and morphotyped. After sorting, the specimens were mounted on glass slides for microscopy. At the end, 1,325 individuals were identified, distributed across twelve species, with the species Entomobrya sp.1 being the most abundant one. Class Collembola, as well as the Superfamily Entomobryoidea constitute new records for the area. With new records of occurrence of the species Pseudosinella triocellata, Seira ritae and Capbrya brasiliensis. The species diversity measured for the transect was 0.83 for the Shannon-Wiener index and 0.33 for the Pielou equitability index. The environmental parameters that best explained the diversity found were leaf litter height and soil temperature.