Species richness, abundance, distribution and similarity between cave invertebrate communities were compared among seven caves located in the Peruaçu River valley, north of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Such comparisons aimed to determinate the degree of biological complexity in the sampled caves, calculated by the "Index of Biological Complexity in Caves", presented in this manuscript. The prese...

Within the Orthopteran species, those of the suborder Ensifera have been rarely studied from the cytogenetic point of view, mainly due to the difficulties for taxonomic identification of its species. The Gryllidae is the second largest family of this suborder and possesses some genera, such as Anurogryllus, that occur only on the American continents. The aim of this work was to determine the ka...

The phallus in Tettigoniidae (katydids) is a structure informative relative to the systematics of the group. Despite this, it is often not considered in descriptions of taxa. The lack of adequate descriptions of phalli is not only a gap for sytematic and morphological studies, but postpones works on the evolution of copula. Here we study the exoskeletal morphology of the phallus in katydids, it...

The mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of Formosatettix qinlingensis, Coptotettix longjiangensis and Thoradonta obtusilobata (Orthoptera: Caelifera: Tetrigoidea) were sequenced in this study, and almost the entire mitogenomes of these species were determined. The mitogenome sequences obtained for the three species were 15,180, 14,495 and 14,538 bp in length, respectively, and each sequence inc...

Analyses of species traits have increased our understanding of how environmental drivers such as disturbances affect the composition of arthropod communities and related processes. There are, however, few studies on which traits in the arthropod community are affected by environmental changes and which traits affect ecosystem functioning. The assembly of arthropod traits of several taxa is diff...