Survey of Calliphoridae flies (Diptera) in a mangrove and a fragment of Atlantic Forest in Barra de Guaratiba, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the structure of communities of Calliphoridae flies (Diptera) in two ecosystems (mangrove and Atlantic forest) in Brazil. In each ecosystem, insects from three traps have been monthly sampled in environments with different levels of human impact (preserved, intermediate and anthropized), from May 2007 to April 2008. A total of 1,017 individuals were collected in the mangrove and 285 in the Atlantic Forest fragment. The most abundant and frequent species in both ecosystems was Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius, 1794). The Atlantic Forest fragment shows higher species richness (9 species) than the mangrove (7 species). In the mangrove, the species Chrysomya albiceps (Wiedemann, 1819) and C. megacephala showed a high level of synanthropy. In the Atlantic Forest fragment the synanthropic index of C. albiceps had negative value, whereas for C. megacephala and Hemilucilia semidiaphana (Rondani, 1850) its value was positive. The abundance of C. megacephala was significantly correlated with precipitation (rs = 0.73, p = 0.01) and temperature (rs = 0.66, p = 0.02), in the mangrove. The results show that Calliphoridae species may exhibit different synanthropic behavior in different ecosystems.