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Regional insect inventories require long time, extensive spatial sampling and good will.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how faunistic knowledge develops is of paramount importance to correctly evaluate completeness of insect inventories and to plan future research at regional scale, yet this is an unexplored issue. Aim of this paper was to investigate the processes that lead to a complete species inventory at a regional level for a beetle family. The tenebionid beetles of Latium region (Italy) were analysed as a case study representative of general situations. A comprehensive faunistic database including 3,561 records spanning from 1871 to 2010 was realized examining 25,349 museum specimens and published data. Accumulation curves and non-parametric estimators of species richness were applied to model increase in faunistic knowledge over time, through space and by collectors' number. Long time, large spatial extent and contribution of many collectors were needed to obtain a reliable species inventory. Massive sampling was not effective in recovering more species. Amateur naturalists (here called parafaunists) were more efficient collectors than professional entomologists. Museum materials collected by parafaunists over long periods and large spatial extent resulted to be a cost effective source of faunistic information with small number of collected individuals. It is therefore important to valuate and facilitate the work of parafaunists as already suggested for parataxonomists. By contrast, massive collections by standardized techniques for ecological research seem to be of scarce utility in improving faunistic knowledge, but their value for faunistic studies may be enhanced if they are conducted in poorly surveyed areas.

SUBMITTER: Fattorini S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3632580 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Regional insect inventories require long time, extensive spatial sampling and good will.

Fattorini Simone S

PloS one 20130422 4

Understanding how faunistic knowledge develops is of paramount importance to correctly evaluate completeness of insect inventories and to plan future research at regional scale, yet this is an unexplored issue. Aim of this paper was to investigate the processes that lead to a complete species inventory at a regional level for a beetle family. The tenebionid beetles of Latium region (Italy) were analysed as a case study representative of general situations. A comprehensive faunistic database incl ...[more]

PMID: 23630627

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Project description:BackgroundTime-lapse imaging has proven highly valuable for studying development, yielding data of much finer resolution than traditional "still-shot" studies and allowing direct examination of tissue and cell dynamics. A major challenge for time-lapse imaging of animals is keeping specimens immobile yet healthy for extended periods of time. Although this is often feasible for embryos, the difficulty of immobilizing typically motile juvenile and adult stages remains a persistent obstacle to time-lapse imaging of post-embryonic development.ResultsHere we describe a new method for long-duration time-lapse imaging of adults of the small freshwater annelid Pristina leidyi and use this method to investigate its regenerative processes. Specimens are immobilized with tetrodotoxin, resulting in irreversible paralysis yet apparently normal regeneration, and mounted in agarose surrounded by culture water or halocarbon oil, to prevent dehydration but allowing gas exchange. Using this method, worms can be imaged continuously and at high spatial-temporal resolution for up to 5 days, spanning the entire regeneration process. We performed a fine-scale analysis of regeneration growth rate and characterized cell migration dynamics during early regeneration. Our studies reveal the migration of several putative cell types, including one strongly resembling published descriptions of annelid neoblasts, a cell type suggested to be migratory based on "still-shot" studies and long hypothesized to be linked to regenerative success in annelids.ConclusionsCombining neurotoxin-based paralysis, live mounting techniques and a starvation-tolerant study system has allowed us to obtain the most extensive high-resolution longitudinal recordings of full anterior and posterior regeneration in an invertebrate, and to detect and characterize several cell types undergoing extensive migration during this process. We expect the tetrodotoxin paralysis and time-lapse imaging methods presented here to be broadly useful in studying other animals and of particular value for studying post-embryonic development.

Dataset Information

Regional insect inventories require long time, extensive spatial sampling and good will.

Publications

Regional insect inventories require long time, extensive spatial sampling and good will.

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