Distribution, habitat use and plant associations of Moluchia brevipennis (Saussure, 1864) (Blattodea: Ectobiidae): an endemic cockroach from Chilean Mediterranean Matorral biome

Revista Brasileira de Entomologia 61 (2017) 114–122 REVISTA BRASILEIRA DE Entomologia A Journal on Insect Diversity and Evolution www.rbentomologia.com Biology, Ecology and Diversity Distribution, habitat use and plant associations of Moluchia brevipennis (Saussure, 1864) (Blattodea: Ectobiidae): an endemic cockroach from Chilean Mediterranean Matorral biome Constanza Schapheer a,∗ , Margarita M. Lopez-Uribe b , Alejandro Vera c , Cristian A. Villagra a a Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Facultad de Ciencias Básicas, Instituto de Entomología, Santiago, Chile University Park, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Entomology, United States c Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Facultad de Ciencias Básicas, Departamento de Biología, Santiago, Chile b a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 10 October 2016 Received in revised form 27 January 2017 Accepted 1 February 2017 Available online 17 February 2017 Associate Editor: Gustavo Graciolli Keywords: Larcenists Habitat fragmentation Ecological interactions South American cockroaches a b s t r a c t Wild cockroaches are often described as abundant and diverse insects from wet tropical zones; however, they can also be found in arid and semiarid areas. It is proposed that in these drier environments cockroach survival may dependent on its tight association with native plant species. In this work, using bait trapping and active collection methods, we surveyed cockroach species along central Chile coastal scrubland; the southern limit of the semiarid Mediterranean Matorral biome in the Neotropical Region (32◦ S). Based on morphological and DNA barcoding methods we found that our collected cockroaches belonged to native species Moluchia brevipennis (Saussure, 1864) (Blattodea: Ectobiidae). Furthermore, thanks to field sampling, we noticed for the first time that M. brevipennis predominantly can be found in patches of native vegetation from Matorral biome, for instance, associated to endemic plant species from Puya (Bromeliaceae) genus, where we recorded these wild cockroaches feeding on flowers at dusk. Under the light of these findings, we discuss the relevance of the association between M. brevipennis and native plants for its survival in this semiarid habitat, its potential ecological function and the ongoing hazards for native insect species resulting from nearby urban sprawl in coastal central Chile. © 2017 Sociedade Brasileira de Entomologia. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Introduction Despite being popularly recognized as household pests, less than 1% of all described cockroach species are adapted to humandominated habitats. Pest or domestic cockroaches are capable of colonizing human habitat and can become a health concern as well as an urban nuisance (Rivault et al., 1993; World Health Organization, 1999). By the contrary, the remaining known cockroach species are commonly not associated with urbanized environments, as they live in diverse natural ecosystems, where these insects play key ecological roles (Roth and Willis, 1960; Bell et al., 2007). For instance, besides of its contribution with nutrient cycling and organic matter turnover (Irmer and Furch, 1979; Geng and Côté, 2002; Tarli et al., 2014), wild cockroaches play important ecological roles as detritivores (Tarli et al., 2014; Mullins, 2015), florivores (Ball et al., 1942), xylophagous (Pellens et al., 2002), ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail: (C. Schapheer). and even pollinators (Nagamitsu and Inoue, 1997; Vlasáková et al., 2008). The distribution of wild cockroaches is mainly restricted to natural areas in tropical regions of the globe. For instance, in South America most records for wild species are from Brazil (Albuquerque and Lopes, 1976; Pellens and Grandcolas, 2008) and Guiana Shield (Grandcolas, 1994a,b; Evangelista et al., 2015). Among the explanations for this constraint distribution is that cockroaches exhibit intolerance to low humidity and extreme temperatures, which also restricts the number of potential habitats for these insects to the equatorial regions (Bell et al., 2007). Despite this general pattern, there are formidable exceptions of wild cockroaches found in dry environments such as genus Arenivaga (Corydiidae) inhabiting sand dunes in California (Hawke and Farley, 1973), Heterogamisca chopardi Uvarov, 1936 (Corydiidae) (Grandcolas, 1995) and Polyphaga aegyptiaca (Corydiidae) from Saudi-Arabia desert (Grandcolas, 1996) Moreover, wild cockroaches can also inhabit temperate environments, as it is the case of Epilampra hualpensis (Blaberidae) (Uribe, 1977) and Moluchia strigata (Ectobiidae), endemic species from Mediterranean-type sclerophyllous forest in central Chile (Villagra and Schapheer, 2016). In these http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rbe.2017.02.001 0085-5626/© 2017 Sociedade Brasileira de Entomologia. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). C. Schapheer et al. / Revista Brasileira de Entomologia 61 (2017) 114–122 last-mentioned cases, roaches were found in association with endemic Bromeliad litter (Uribe, 1977; Villagra and Schapheer, 2016). Considering these examples of habitat use by non-tropical species, it is possible to suggest that wild cockroaches’ distribution and its ecological associations may be underrepresented in current literature; currently, we made a search for scientific arti® cles in Google Scholar using keywords; cockroach, Blattodea or Blattaria, between years 2000 and 2016 (n = 500 papers), and discovered that only 36% (178 papers) corresponded to studies on wild cockroaches. Furthermore, from that fraction no more than 7% (13 papers) were focused on the ecological associations or distribution of native species. Despite this scarcity of non-tropical cockroaches studied, these evidences may illustrate the colonization patterns of subtropical and temperate regions of the world by Blattodea. Thus, this kind of work is quite valuable and efforts concentrated in surveying for new species in non-tropical regions as well as disentangling its ecological interaction are paramount in order to understand the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of these insects (Caesar et al., 2015). South America temperate regions such as central Chile are suitable candidate spots for these explorations, as these latitudes have been scarcely explored for native cockroach species. Regarding cockroaches in Chile, the most recent species description was made in the seventies (Uribe, 1977), and the latest revision on this order was published in the same decade (Moroni and Camousseight, 1976). To date, thirteen endemic and five introduced cockroach species have been reported for Chile (see Appendix A; Moroni and Camousseight, 1976; Artigas, 1994; Camousseight, (...truncated)