Levantamento de Lepidoptera no Parque Municipal Victório Siquierolli na cidade de Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brasil

Abstract

From the 17th century onwards, the city, with a growing urbanization process, increased its demand for products, energy and services, and thus dictated the way in which natural resources were explored in terms of economic, social, political and cultural interests. The existence of green areas in urban space is essential to alleviate the problems caused by urbanization. Arthropods are important bioindicators and Lepidoptera are viable in this type of assessment due to their diversity and ease of capture and identification. This work aims to survey Lepidoptera species in the Victório Siquierolli Municipal Park, Uberlandia, Minas Gerais, Brazil; compare two collection techniques; in addition, to contribute to knowledge about the species present in the city. The collection of Lepidoptera was carried out through active capture (entomological net) and with Van Someren-Rydon type attraction traps (VSR traps). The captures were carried out over eight visits to the park in the rainy season, between the months of March and April 2021. Finally, the species were compared with records of Lepidoptera in Uberlandia. Furthermore, the use of the two techniques in parallel was compared. The evaluation of species richness of Lepidoptera was carried out using the Jackknife 1 estimator on EstimateS software, finding the total species richness based on data obtained in the field. In addition, species captured actively or with attraction traps were compared using a dendrogram built on R software, to assess the degree of similarity of the samples. 40 Lepidoptera morphospecies were captured. The total richness of the studied area, estimated by Jackknife 1, was approximately 65 species. Among the collected species, 34 were actively captured and 6 were captured by the attraction traps. In the cluster analysis, the comparison between the capture techniques showed a cophenetic correlation coefficient equal to 0.98. The dissimilarity of species captured by the active or attractive way shows that, if there is an interest in carrying out a more complete survey of the species, different capture techniques are recommended. Species whose presence in Uberlandia was unknown in the literature were identified at Victório Siquierolli park.