Coleópteros da Coleção Entomológica do DSE/UFPB: organização do acervo em famílias e novos registros de ocorrência

Abstract

Coleoptera is the largest order of insects, with about 400,000 described species, popularly known as beetles. Biological collections, depositary centers of biodiversity, concentrate a large amount of information not yet known to science. The Entomological Collection of the Department of Systematics and Ecology of UFPB houses about 200 thousand specimens, of which at least 10% correspond to beetles. This study aimed to analyze the information of Coleoptera specimens deposited in the DSE Entomological Collect ion, identifying them at the family level, in order to know their distribution and relationships with the environments / ecosystems. For each specimen origin data were analyzed, such as collector name, place and date of collection. 31 beetle families were organized and identified. Of these, 27 families were toppled, totaling 4,930 specimens. There were eight most abundant families: Scarabaeidae, Curculionidae, Trogidae, Dermestidae, Chrysomelidae, Cleridae, Staphylinidae and Carabidae. These individuals were collected in the states of Paraíba, Bahia, Pará, Ceará, Piaui, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pernambuco and in Germany, Bavaria. The ecosystems in which they were found are: Caatinga, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest and their associated regions (altitude swamp, sandbank and mangrove swamp). There were new records of the Byrrhidae family for the state of Bahia, in Altitude Marsh; Cleridae for Ceará; and Passalidae for Paraíba. There have been unpublished records of Carabidae and Staphylinidae for Mangrove; Dytiscidae, Erotylidae, Gyrinidae, Hydrophylidae and Lampyridae for Altitude Marsh; and Trogidae for Altitude Marsh and Mangrove. Therefore, more work needs to be done to improve the organization and understanding of these specimens, such as more specific taxonomic identification and better analysis of the distribution of these beetles.