Seasonality in insect abundance in the “Cerrado” of Goiás State, Brazil

Seasonality in insect abundance in the “Cerrado” of Goiás State, Brazil. Many studies have provided evidence that tropical insects undergo seasonal changes in abundance and that this is partly due to alternation between the dry and rainy seasons. In the Brazilian “Cerrado” (savannah), this season alternation is particularly evident. The purpose of this work was to study the seasonal abundance of insects in a “Cerrado” area in the municipality of Pirenópolis, Goiás State, Brazil. The insects were captured fortnightly using a light trap between September 2005 and August 2006. The insects collected were separated at the order level and counted. Faunistic analysis was performed to select the predominant insect orders, a multiple linear regression to examine the relation between climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) with the abundance of insects and a circular distribution analysis to evaluate the existence of seasonality in the abundance of insect orders. A total of 34,741 insect specimens were captured, belonging to 19 orders. The orders with the greatest number of specimens were Hymenoptera (8,022), Coleoptera (6,680), Diptera (6,394), Lepidoptera (6,223), Isoptera (2,272), Hemiptera (2,240) and Trichoptera (1,967), which represent 97.3% of all the specimens collected. All the orders, except for Diptera, Isoptera and Trichoptera, showed a relationship with the climate variables (temperature), and all the orders, except for Diptera, presented a grouped distribution, with greater abundance in the transition from the end of the dry season (September) to the start of the rainy one (October/November). A discussion about seasonality on the abundance of the insects is presented.