No abstract

Thaumastocoris peregrinus n. sp. from Argentina is described. New morphological characters are studied and compared with other related species. This is the first record of a member of the subfamily Thaumastocorinae (Thaumastocoridae) from the New World.

The Lygaeoidea, representing the second largest superfamily in the infraorder Pentatomomorpha, are one of the most diverse groups of Heteroptera with about 700 genera and more than 4,200 species in the world. In the Neotropics, about 184 genera and 836 species are included in 12 of the world's 16 families. For each family, we provide a diagnosis; an overview of the classifi cation; information on the general life history, ecology, and economic importance; and comprehensive keys to subfamilies, tribes, and genera for the Neotropical Region, including Mexico, Central and South America, and the West Indies.

A new genus and species, Williamsocoris ornatus (Schizopteridae: Hypselosomatinae), is described from Argentina. This is the first record of the subfamily in South America. The particular structures of the rostrum of this new taxon are unique in the family.

Three independent but complementary lines of research have provided evidence for the recognition of refugia: paleontology, phylogeography and species distributional modelling (SDM). SDM assesses the ecological requirements of a species based on its known occurrences and enables its distribution to be projected on past climatological reconstructions. One advantage over the other two approaches is that it provides an explicit link to environment and geography, thereby enabling the analysis of a large number of taxa in the search for more general refugia patterns. We propose a methodology for using SDM to recognize biogeographical patterns of endemic insects from Southern South America. We built species distributional models for 59 insect species using Maxent. The species analyzed in the study have narrow niche breadth and were classified into four assemblages according to the ecoregion they inhabit. Models were built for the Late Pleistocene, Mid-Holocene and Present. Through the procedure developed for this study we used the models to recognize: Late Pleistocene refugia; areas with high species richness during all three periods; climatically constant areas (in situ refugia); consistent patterns among in situ refugia, Pleistocene refugia and current distribution of endemic species. We recognized two adjacent Pleistocene refugia with distinct climates; four in situ refugia, some of which are undergoing a process of fragmentation and retraction or enlargement. Interestingly, we found a congruent pattern among in situ refugia, Pleistocene refugia and endemic species. Our results seem to be consistent with the idea that long-term climate stability is known to have a key role in promoting persistence of biodiversity in an area. Our Pleistocene and in situ refugia are consistent with refugia identified in studies focusing on different taxa and applying other methodologies, showing that the method developed can be used to identify such areas and prove their importance for conservation.