Flesh flies species (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) from a grassland and a woodland in a Nature Reserve of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

Temporal changes of flesh flies abundance were simultaneously recorded at monthly intervals during a year in a woodland and in a grassland at the "Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur" (RECS), Buenos Aires city, Argentina. Samples were taken at monthly intervals (February 2004-January 2005). Hourly captures of adult flies (10:00 am-04:00 pm) were taken each sampling date with a hand net. Temperature was recorded at each hourly capture. The baits used were 200 g of rotten cow liver and 200 g of fresh dog faeces. Records of abundance included only species whose abundance was ≥30 individuals accumulated during the whole sampling period. Considering overall abundance, a non-parametric Chi-square test was used to estimate deviations of an expected habitat and bait preference ratios of 1:1. The same criterion was applied to include species in a contingency table to describe their seasonality. The final matrix included four species whose associations to seasons were analyzed by using a Correspondence Analysis. To normalize the data, a log 10 (n+1) transformation was applied prior to the analysis of correlation. Pearson product-moment correlations were used to examine the relationship between flesh-fly abundance with temperature and habitat preference. The entire sample accumulated 1 305 individuals and 18 species. The flies were more abundant in the grassland than in the woodland. Microcerella muehni, Oxysarcodexia paulistanensis, O. varia and Tricharaea (Sarcophagula) occidua exhibited the higher relative abundance, representing the remaining species less than 8 % of the entire sample. Most of the recorded species showed preference for faces as bait. Concerning the dominant species, all of them but M. muehni, a suggestively termophobic species, prevailed in late spring-summer. The observed species arrangement at both sites indicates low species diversity and equitability and high information per individual in the average. The referred community traits would indicate the possible effects of environmental disturbance due to the proximity of study sites to dense urban settlements.

Dipterans Associated with a Decomposing Animal Carcass in a Rainforest Fragment in Brazil: Notes on the Early Arrival and Colonization by Necrophagous Species

“…The high diversity associated with low abundance of Sarcophagidae observed in the rainforest fragment of Dois Irmaos State Park has also been found in other field studies (Mulieri et al 2008). The other dominant families among the emerged adults, Muscidae and Phoridae, are also commonly reported in larval stages in field experiments on forensic entomology (Segura et al 2011).…”

Flesh flies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae: Sarcophaginae) from the Colombian Guajira biogeographic province, an approach to their ecology and distribution

“…material 1). This species was also dominant in similar studies in a natural reserve in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where it was found associated with feces (Mariluis et al 2007, Mulieri et al 2008. In Brazil, it was the most abundant species in cow's lung tissue (Pereira de Sousa et al 2015) and the second most abundant in pig carcasses (Barbosa et al 2009), in buffalo excrements (Marchiori 2014), and the third most abundant in feces in the Archipelago Fernando de Noronha (Couri et al 2008).…”

Sarchophagid flies (Insecta, Diptera) from pig carcasses in Minas Gerais, Brazil, with nine new records from the Cerrado, a threatened Neotropical biome

“…Nephochaetopteryx cyaneiventris had been previously recorded from the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Paraná in Brazil (Lopes 1936;Mello-Patiu et al 2009;Vairo et al 2011), and from Argentina (Mulieri et al 2008(Mulieri et al , 2010. Vairo et al (2011) registered it for the first time on pig carcass after conducting a forensic experiment in the state of Paraná.…”

“…Our record of N. cyaneiventris is therefore the second one in pig carcass, the species being more abundant in the forest site. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, this species was collected only in forest, attracted by rotten cow liver and feces (Mulieri et al 2008(Mulieri et al , 2010.…”