Tropical forests are among the most biodiverse biomes on the planet. Nevertheless, quantifying the abundance and species richness within megadiverse groups is a significant challenge. We designed a study to address this challenge by documenting the variability of the insect fauna across a vertical canopy gradient in a Central Amazonian tropical forest. Insects were sampled over two weeks using 6-m Gressitt-style Malaise traps set at five heights (0 m–32 m–8 m intervals) on a metal tower in a tropical forest north of Manaus, Brazil. The traps contained 37,778 specimens of 18 orders of insects. Using simulation approaches and nonparametric analyses, we interpreted the abundance and richness of insects along this gradient. Diptera, Hymenoptera, and Coleoptera had their greatest abundance at the ground level, whereas Lepidoptera and Hemiptera were more abundant in the upper levels of the canopy. We identified species of 38 of the 56 families of Diptera, finding that 527 out of 856 species (61.6%) were not sampled at the ground level. Mycetophilidae, Tipulidae, and Phoridae were significantly more diverse and/or abundant at the ground level, while Tachinidae, Dolichopodidae, and Lauxaniidae were more diverse or abundant at upper levels. Our study suggests the need for a careful discussion of strategies of tropical forest conservation based on a much more complete understanding of the three-dimensional distribution of its insect diversity.

Insects will soon reach one million known species worldwide. Brazil, with about 9% of this total, and possibly another 400 thousand species yet to be discovered, harbors the highest insect diversity in the world. The country has a complement of about 140 active taxonomists, which means a quota of 3,600 insect species per professional. Each Brazilian taxonomist publishes, on average, about 100 species during a professional life span, so it would take 2-3 thousand years to only know the country's insect diversity. Some of the problems hindering the development of insect taxonomy in Brazil are: difficulties with international loans; difficulties with permission for dissecting loaned type specimens; low scientific esteem of taxonomic journals as assessed by the Impact Factor index; academic low esteem of taxonomy knowledge; legal restrictions to field work and disregard of the Brazilian legislation that regulates the final destination of biological material. If truly responsible actions towards preserving biological diversity are to be undertaken nationwide, key problems must be addressed and solved: creation of a national center of information on entomological diversity; investment in a core of institutions that would act as an axis for the development of taxonomic knowledge; investment in the formation of a new generation of taxonomists; elimination of bureaucratic obstacles currently hampering the accomplishment of the constitutional mandate for developing knowledge on biological diversity and developing organized actions to control the deforestation of highly biodiverse areas.Em breve, um milhão de espécies de insetos estará descrita em todo mundo. O Brasil, com cerca de 9% desse total e possivelmente outras 400 mil espécies ainda não descritas, tem a maior diversidade de insetos. Mas temos cerca de 140 taxônomos ativos, o que significa aproximadamente 3.600 espécies de insetos para cada profissional. Como cada um deles publica em média 100 espécies novas durante sua vida profissional, seriam necessários 2-3 mil anos para descrever toda nossa entomodiversidade. Alguns dos problemas para o desenvolvimento da taxonomia de insetos no Brasil são: dificuldades em obter empréstimos de alguns museus estrangeiros; dificuldades para dissecar espécimes tipos emprestados; depreciação de revistas taxonômicas pela aplicação do fator de impacto; persistência da compreensão limitada do valor do conhecimento taxonômico; legislação restritiva para trabalho de campo; e desrespeito à legislação brasileira que regulamenta sobre o depósito de material biológico coletado no país. Para ações verdadeiramente efetivas para preservação da diversidade biológica no país são necessários: a criação de um centro nacional de informação sobre o conhecimento de diversidade entomológica; investimentos em conjunto de instituições que atuariam como eixos de desenvolvimento do conhecimento taxonômico; investimentos na formação de novos taxonomistas; soluções para os problemas burocráticos que inibem o cumprimento constitucional de conhecimento da biodiversidade; e ações altamente organizadas para conter o desmatamento em áreas de alta diversidade

The problem of transposition without distortion of the phylogenetic information of cladograms and trees to a classification has elicited several suggestions from many authors. Both the subordination and sequencing methods have limitations which add up to those intrinsic of the Linnaean system. Conventions were made by Patterson & Rosen (1977) and Wiley (1979) to solve the problems of fossils in classification, of placing groups of uncertain position, of distinguishing tricotomies from sequencing, and of including the ancestral with recent and other fossil groups in the classification. The impossibility of naming inclusive taxa has been a major problem in the sequenced system. Herewith a method is proposed to refer to these groups without increasing the number of categories or names. An initial discussion of the relations between sequenced classification and assymetry of the phylogenies is made

Polychaetes are metameric worms recognized for having parapodia, chaetae, and nuchal organs. Some authors have extended the Annelida to include Pogonophora, Echiura, and Clitellata. These suggestions are insufficient to generate a monophyletic group. They do not take into account two very large and important clades that in a cladistic analysis at a higher level are shown to be nested within the Annelida: the Ecdysozoa (arthropods and related taxa) and Enterocoela (deuterostomes and related taxa). Evolutionary histories of most characters across metazoan phyla are still very poorly known. Metameres and coeloms have been considered homoplastic in the literature, and yet the homeobox genes responsible for the expression of metamerism and of paired appendages, at least, are very largely distributed among the Metazoa. A phylogenetic analysis was performed for the ingroups of Polychaeta, including Clitellata, Enterocoela, and Ecdysozoa as terminal taxa. The remaining non-metameric phyla Platyhelminthes, Nemertea, Mollusca, and Sipuncula were included to root the tree within the Bilateria. Empirical data was obtained from the literature and run with the software Hennig86 with two comparative interpretations of a priori hypotheses of primary homology: one with negative characters (coding losses) and another considering only positive characters (without assumptions about losses). The most relevant conclusions are: (1) Annelida and Polychaeta are non-monophyletic, even when including Echiura, Clitellata, and Pogonophora; (2) Articulata, as traditionally circumscribed for Annelida and Arthropoda, is also not monophyletic; (3) Metameria becomes monophyletic only when Ecdysozoa and Enterocoela are included in addition to the traditional annelid taxa; (4) Ecdysozoa are the sister group of Aphrodita; (5) Clitellata are related to deposit-feeding sedentary polychaetes (scolecids), and Questidae represent their sister group; (6) Owenia plus Enterocoela form a monophyletic group related to the tubicolous polychaetes

"Chapter Three. Neotropical Diptera Diversity: Richness, Patterns, And Perspectives" published on 01 Jan 2010 by Brill.

A third Neotropical species of the genusDocosiaWinnertz is described from the Colombian Andes. Three males and four females ofD. adusta sp. nov.from Cundinamarca, Colombia, collected at 3600m elevation were examined. Detailed illustrations of the male and female terminalia are presented and morphological differences in relation to those of other species of the genus are discussed. The relationships between Holarctic and Neotropical species withinDocosiaare discussed and overlap of circumantarctic, tropical, and Nearctic elements in the northern Andes is considered.