Inventário da entomofauna remanescente na área urbana de Belém

Abstract

The present work aims to inventory the plant-visiting entomofauna of the shrub stratum of two parks in Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and Bosque Rodrigues Alves, in order to compare these parks in terms of the diversity and abundance of these insects, relating them to the general characteristics of each park and the floristic composition of their understory. Visits with three weekly observations, always in the morning hours, were made during four months in each park. At each visit the plants were inspected to record the insect visitation, located, identified, and classified according to their origin. Visiting insects were manually collected with the aid of a puçá. The individuals were kept dry and identified later. The material was photographed and stored in the Goeldi Museum's collection, and a reference collection from each park was set aside. In total, 299 samples of insects were collected in the two parks (142 in MPEG and 157 in BRA). The MPEG park was characterized as having more than 60% introduced plants in its understory while the BRA vegetation was a forest remnant with few introductions. We collected 387 insects in the Museum and 634 in the BRA, totaling 7 orders, 24 families and 210 morphospecies. The Bosque was three times richer in morphospecies than the Museum. The similarity of fauna between the parks was less than 33% for all orders analyzed. There is a clear distinction between the two parks. The difference observed in the composition of entomofauna may be a reflection of the large number of exotic plants introduced into the Museum. The lower diversity of species found there may be a product not only of the distinct floristic composition, but also due to the more urban location of the park, its smaller size, and the history of its constitution.