Land Flatworm (Platyhelminthes, Tricladida, Terricola) Community Composition in Two Areas of Semi-Caducifolius Forest in Southern Brazil

Authors

  • Michelle Bicalho Antunes
  • Denírio Itamar Lopes Marques
  • Ana Maria Leal-Zanchet

Abstract

Studies on land planarian community structure and composition have been done mainly in areas of mixed and dense ombrophilous forest in southern Brazil. In the present paper, we analyzed land planarian community composition in areas of semi-caducifolius forest of the State Park of Itapuã (SP-Itapuã) and the Campus of the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), in the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul. We registered 20 species, two of them belonging to the family Rhynchodemidae (Rhynchodeminae), one to the genus Rhynchodemus Leidy, 1851 and the other to the genus Dolichoplana Moseley, 1877, and 18 to the family Geoplanidae (Geoplaninae). The latter are distributed in the genera Geoplana Stimpson, 1857, Notogynaphallia Ogren and Kawakatsu, 1990, and Pasipha Ogren and Kawakatsu, 1990, as well as in the collective group Pseudogeoplana Ogren and Kawakatsu, 1990. The genus Geoplana, with 7 species, showed the highest species richness. We observed 9 and 13 species, respectively, in the Campus of the UNISINOS and SP-Itapuã, with two species, Notogynaphallia abundans (Graff, 1899) and Geoplana gaucha Froehlich, 1959, common to both areas. The similarity between these two areas was low (0.1). The known distribution of Dolichoplana carvalhoi Correa, 1947, until now only known from its type-locality, the city of São Paulo, is thus amplified.

Key words: survey, biodiversity, semi-caducifolius forest, man-disturbed areas, Geoplanidae.

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Published

2013-09-23

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2008): January/April

Section

Articles

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