The leaf-cuttíng ant Atta mexicana (F. Smith) removes the colony refuse out of the nest, forming typical mounds that attract many animáis. The purpose of this work was to study the insects living in the detritus. Forty nine species belonging in 9 orders were found; Coleptera constituted 51% of the total number of species, Collembola 16.3% and Díptera 10.2%. According to the developmental stages found in the refuse mounds, three categories were established: permanent, temporal and casual species. The entomofauna is aiso divided in oblígate and facultativa ¡nquilines. Seasonal populatíon changes are described taking the mound as a unit and divídíng it in three levels. The highest abundance was found in the dry and cool season. Trophíc categories are established for the entomofauna. The shelter and food resource roles that detritus play in the area are díscussed. The known information on insects associated with Atta refuse mounds is tabulated.

As partial results of a long-term project for the revision of the supraspecific classification of the American Melolonthini, using phylogenetic methods, interesting information on the relationships between the subgeneric groups of Phyllophaga Harris proposed by Saylor were obtained. The genus Listrochelus was described by Blanchard in 1851. However, in 1940, Saylor reduced it as a subgenus of Phyllophaga. The objective of the present study is to confirm the monophyly of Listrochelus by means of a phylogenetic analysis. A total of 132 species were analyzed; 31 species of them belong to Listrochelus, 76 are from other groups of Phyllophaga, and 25 species are from the outgroup. A morphological matrix with 281 characters was codified. A traditional search with 1000 iterations was performed in TNT. Branch support was investigated using the bootstrap method. Parsimony analysis resulted in ten equally parsimonious trees. The topology obtained in the strict consensus tree shows that the limits of Listrochelus are very clear (bootstrap 99%), supported by five synapomorphies and a combination of eight character states that are not exclusive to the group. Based on the hypothesis obtained, the restitution of the genus Listrochelus is proposed.

Se actualiza el grupo “pruinosa” formado por seis especies mexicanas y centroamericanas: P. pruinosa (Blanchard 1851) de Campeche, Chiapas, Hidalgo, Puebla, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas y Veracruz, México; Rio San Juan, Nicaragua; Alajuela, Guanacaste, Heredia, Limón y San José, Costa Rica; P. tegulicolis Saylor 1934 de Chiapas, México; Santa Rosa, Guatemala; Morazán y Tegucigalpa, Honduras; P. tegenera Saylor 1935 de Carazo, Chinandega, Granada, Jinotega, Masaya y Rivas, Nicaragua; Guanacaste y Puntarenas, Costa Rica; P. hoogstraali Saylor 1943 de Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos y Puebla, México; P. tlilloa n. sp. de Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, estado de México, Morelos, Nayarit, Puebla y Sinaloa, México; y P. yautepecana n. sp. de Oaxaca, México. Se incluyen la diagnosis del grupo, las redescripciones de cuatro especies y las descripciones de dos especies nuevas, con ilustraciones de las estructuras diagnósticas, así como una clave para separar las especies del grupo.

Comparison between Phyllophaga (Coleoptera: Melolonthidae) assemblages in Western Cuba. The Cuban archipelago has 79 Phyllophaga species with a 98.6 % of endemism, which makes the group ecologically and economically important, as some species are classified as crop pests. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the composition and structure of the Phyllophaga assemblages with their habitat type, considering both plant structure and level of human habitat disturbance. A total of 17 locations were sampled in Western Cuba during the rainy seasons of the period from 2011 to 2015; these differed in habitat types (forests and agroecosystems). Samplings followed standard methods and were made once with a light trap screen in each locality. A total of 1 153 individuals of 24 Phyllophaga species were collected. The total abundance of collected individuals varied between 10 and 306, and species richness between two and nine species. The most abundant species was Phyllophaga dissimilis (Chevrolat) which also had the highest frequency of occurrence. Generally, less anthropized sites reflected richer and equitative communities; although these characteristics appeared in two sites that showed intermediate degree of disturbance. The non-metric multidimensional scaling showed that the most similar samples were those of the very anthropized sites; this similarity was given mainly by the abundance of Phyllophaga dissimilis, P. insualepinorum and P. puberula. Besides, the geographical distance was not related to the similarity of these assemblages. Rev. Biol. Trop. 65 (1): 351-363. Epub 2017 March 01.