In the tropics, human disturbance continuously challenges initiatives for habitat conservation. In these regions, as economical budgets for conservation shrink, conservation planning requires precise information on when and how different kinds of disturbance may affect natural populations, but also on adequate experimental designs to monitor them. Due to their high diversity, ecological role, stable taxonomy and facilities to sample, dung beetles are used in biodiversity surveys for conservation purposes worldwide. Here we studied the short-term effects of dung beetle communities to an important and widespread ecological disturbance due to road construction in the Amazon basin. We surveyed the dung-beetle community in a spatio-temporal context, i.e. in transects located at 10, 50 and 100-m from a newly constructed, 10-m wide, paved road. The sampling periods took place 1, 3 and 6 months after the construction. During the survey, we collected 4895 specimens that belong to 69 species in 19 dung beetles genera. Six dung beetles species (Canthon aequinoctialis, C. luteicolis, Dichotomius fortestriatus, Eurysternus caribaeus, E. confusus and Onthophagus haematopus) accounted for 55% of all individuals collected. Both species diversity and abundance tended to decrease during the 6 months after the opening of the road, but not with distance from the road. Accordingly, an NMDS analysis revealed clear differences in dung beetle community composition and biomass among the three sampling periods, but not with respect to transect location. However, the number of rare species tended to increase toward the forest interior. A detailed analysis of dung beetle species among transects revealed that 5 species (Sylvicanthon bridarollii, Canthidium sp. 2, C. sp. 6, C. sp. 7 and Ontherus diabolicus) were more abundant when getting further from the road. On the contrary 6 species (Eurysternus hamaticollis, E. velutinus, E. confusus, E. caribaeus, Deltochilum oberbengeri and D. orbiculare) increased in abundance in the transect next to the road. Our study therefore confi rmed that while overall community metrics did not respond to road construction, several rare dung beetle species did, within an incredibly rapid time frame. While pattern based descriptions of dung beetle responses to anthropogenic activities are common in the literature, our fi ndings suggest that effect of roads is certainly under emphasized.Résumé. Réponse à court terme des communautés de bousiers aux perturbations induites par la constructions de toutes dans l'Amazonie Equatorienne. Dans les zones tropicales, les activités humaines sont une menace constante pour la conservation des habitats. Les budgets alloués aux efforts de conservation étant réduits dans ces régions, l'établissement de plans de gestion requiert des informations précises sur la manière dont différents types de perturbations affectent les populations naturelles et sur les protocoles expérimentaux adéquats pour suivre l'évolution de ces populations. En raison de leur diversité, de leur rôle écologiq...

Abstract. The pre-montane forest of the northern Andes is considered one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Tools for rapidly assessing biodiversity inventories are currently being developed and may aid conservation efforts. Here, we focus on the use of the Ants of the Leaf Litter (ALL) protocol as such a tool and describe the composition of an Ecuadorian pre-montane leaf litter ant community. Two 200-m transects (i.e. two complete replications of the protocol) with a total of 40 winkler sacs and 39 pitfall traps were analyzed. In total, we collected 4 875 specimens from 103 species, 37 genera and 9 subfamilies. The abundance-based coverage estimator (ACE), an asymptotic estimator of species richness, predicted a total of 109 ant species for the forest fl oor, making this ant community one of the most diverse recorded in tropical mid-altitude forests. Subsets of the community sampled by winkler sacs and pitfall traps differed signifi cantly. Winkler sacs were more effi cient than pitfall traps at capturing individual ants (226% more) and species (129% more). Relative to pitfall traps, an analysis of morphology suggested that winkler sacs collected a subset of the ant community that was smaller, less mobile and with smaller eyes (e.g. more subterranean).

Fast and accurate taxonomic identification of invasive trans-located ladybird beetle species is essential to prevent significant impacts on biological communities, ecosystem functions, and agricultural business economics. Therefore, in this work we propose a two-step automatic detector for ladybird beetles in random environment images as the first stage towards an automated classification system. First, an image processing module composed of a saliency map representation, simple linear iterative clustering superpixels segmentation, and active contour methods allowed us to generate bounding boxes with possible ladybird beetles locations within an image. Subsequently, a deep convolutional neural network-based classifier selects only the bounding boxes with ladybird beetles as the final output. This method was validated on a 2, 300 ladybird beetle image data set from Ecuador and Colombia obtained from the iNaturalist project. The proposed approach achieved an accuracy score of 92% and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.977 for the bounding box generation and classification tasks. These successful results enable the proposed detector as a valuable tool for helping specialists in the ladybird beetle detection problem.

RESUMEN.-El manejo de las especies invasoras es considerado uno de los grandes desafíos que impone el Cambio Global a nuestras sociedades, junto con la deforestación y el calentamiento de la atmósfera. Se conoce muy poco sobre las hormigas invasoras en el Ecuador continental, incluso cuando se ha demostrado en el resto del mundo su agresividad, los impactos negativos en los ecosistemas y las pérdidas económicas que causan. La mayoría de registros de hormigas invasoras en el Ecuador provienen de las Islas Galápagos y no existe un inventario de ellas para el Ecuador continental. Aquí compilamos registros de hormigas invasoras presentes en la literatura y en colecciones entomológicas locales para crear la primera lista de hormigas invasoras presentes en el Ecuador continental. Se registra la presencia de un total de 16 especies de hormigas invasoras. De estas, diez especies son extranjeras, pero invasoras en el Ecuador; y seis especies son nativas en el Ecuador e invasoras en el exterior. Proveemos los primeros registros para Ecuador continental de Cardiocondyla minutior, Monomorium floricola, Monomorium pharaonis, Tapinoma melanocephalum, y Tetramorium bicarinatum. Ademas, los registros de Cardiocondyla wroughtonii y Tetramorium lucayanum son los primeros para el país. PALABRAS CLAVES: especies invasoras, especies exóticas, especies vagabundas, fauna continental, nuevos registrosABSTRACT.-Management of invasive species is considered one of the great challenges deriving from Global Change that our societies currently face, besides deforestation and the warming of the atmosphere. Little is known about the invasive ants in continental Ecuador, despite the world-wide demonstrated aggressiveness, negative ecological impact, and economic losses caused by them. Most Ecuadorian records are from the Galápagos Islands and there is yet no inventory for the mainland. Gleaning records from the literature and local entomological collections, we present the first list of invasive ants present on mainland Ecuador. A total of 16 invasive ant species are recorded. Ten ant species are foreign to the country. The remaining six ant species are native to Ecuador and invasive elsewhere. Records of Cardiocondyla minutior, Monomorium floricola, Monomorium pharaonis, Tapinoma melanocephalum, and Tetramorium bicarinatum are the first ones for continental Ecuador. Furthermore, Cardiocondyla wroughtonii and Tetramorium lucayanum are reported for the first time for the country.

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