(Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Ctenuchina), an Endemic Species of Mexico Author(S): Fernando Hernández-Baz, Jorge M
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Ecology and Conservation of Coreura albicosta Draudt, 1916 (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Ctenuchina), an Endemic Species of Mexico Author(s): Fernando Hernández-Baz, Jorge M. González and S. Bradleigh Vinson Source: Southwestern Entomologist, 37(3):369-378. 2012. Published By: Society of Southwestern Entomologists DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3958/059.037.0313 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.3958/059.037.0313 BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainable online platform for over 170 journals and books published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses. Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance of BioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use. Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiries or rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder. BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. VOL. 37, NO. 3 SOUTHWESTERN ENTOMOLOGIST SEP. 2012 Ecology and Conservation of Coreura albicosta Draudt, 1916 (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Ctenuchina), an Endemic Species of Mexico Fernando Hernández-Baz1, Jorge M. González2,3, and S. Bradleigh Vinson2 Abstract. Specimens of Coreura albicosta (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Ctenuchina) deposited in national collections and reported in literature published from 1916 to 2010 were studied. The gathered information suggested that the species is endemic to Mexico, because it has been found only in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz in the Eastern Sierra Madre. The species lives in cloud forest ecosystems. Based on our findings, we propose that this Coreura species should be included in the Official Mexican Norm 059 (Norma Oficial Mexicana 059), which encompasses the environmental protection of wild flora and fauna species native to Mexico and their risk categories, as well as specifications for their inclusion or exclusion, and a list of all species at risk. Resumen. Se revisaron los ejemplares de Coreura albicosta Draudt (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Ctenuchina) depositados en diversas colecciones nacionales, además de estudiarse la información bibliográfica publicada entre 1916 a 2010. Los resultados indican que la distribución geográfica de la especie está restringida al territorio mexicano, específicamente en las vertientes de la Sierra Madre Oriental, en los estados de Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, y Veracruz. Prefiere los ecosistemas Bosque mesófilo de Montaña o bosque nublado. Basados en este estudio, se propone que esta especie de Coreura sea incluida en el documento conocido como Norma Oficial Mexicana 059, el cual abarca la protección del medio ambiente de la flora y fauna nativas de México y sus categorías de riesgo, así como las especificaciones para su inclusión o exclusión, y una lista de todas las especies en riesgo. Introduction Mexico is one of the many countries adhering to the convention on biological diversity (Conabio 1998). Among Mexico’s commitments is development of strategies to preserve biodiversity in terms of wealth, abundance, and biomass of genes-species-ecosystems widely dominated by communities of invertebrates (Wilson 1987). The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) developed the red list of threatened species (IUCN 2011). For Lepidoptera of the world, 388 species of butterflies and moths are listed for protection, none of which are found in Mexico ________________________ 1Corresponding author; Facultad de Biología-Xalapa, Universidad Veracruzana. Circuito Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán s/n. C.P.91000. Zona Universitaria. Xalapa, Veracruz, México,. PhD student CITRO- Universidad Veracruzana E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] 2Texas A&M University, Department of Entomology, College Station, TX 77843-2475. 3Research Associate, McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity. 369 (IUCN 2011). The Convention on the International Commerce of Species Threatened with Fauna and Flora Silvestre (CITES) protects 30 species of Lepidoptera, but only day-flying butterflies and not one moth (CITES 2011). None of the listed butterflies is found in Mexico. Brazil, Colombia, Spain, and Venezuela have their own Red Books of Fauna. Even though the first edition of the Red Book of the Venezuelan Fauna included day-flying moths of the family Castniidae, together with several butterflies, as threatened, the latest edition included only six butterflies, but no moths (Rodríguez and Rojas-Suárez 1995, 2008; González 1999). Colombia has also published a Red Book for Invertebrates and lists 12 species of Lepidoptera of which eight are butterflies and two are moths (Amat-García et al. 2007). Verdú and Galante (2006) included 19 species of Lepidoptera in their Red Book of Invertebrates from Spain; 10 are Butterflies and the other nine are moths. The Brazilian Red Book includes 26 species of butterflies and only two moths (Lucci and Marini-Filho 2011). In Mexico, the Official Mexican Norm NOM-059-ECOL-2001 (Semarnat 2010) on threatened and protected species includes only three insects, two of which are butterflies, the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus (L.), with Special Protection, and Papilio esperanza Beutelspacher, which is listed as Threatened (Semarnat 2010) Wasp-moths (Erebidae: Arctiinae: Arctiini) have two subtribes (Ctenuchina and Euchromiina), and have seldom been studied in Mexico (Lafontaine and Fibiger 2006, Lafontaine and Schmidt 2010). Most adults are aposematic wasp mimics, and many are strikingly similar to their wasp counterpart (Powell and Opler 2009). These moths fly mainly during the night, although some Ctenuchina species of the genera Cacostatia, Coreura, Ctenucha, Cyanopepla, Dinia, and Trichura fly during the day (Hernández-Baz and Bailey 2006). Their distribution is basically Neotropical, with much diversity in the Amazon forests and the eastern slopes of the South American Andes, but some taxa are in the Neartic region (Hernández-Baz and Grados 2004). The number of species in the Americas is 2,532, of which 2,496 are distributed within the Neotropics (Heppner 1991), and 36 are in the Neartic region (Ferguson et al. 2000, Lafontaine and Schmidt 2010). Hernández-Baz et al. (2012) listed 240 wasp-moths in Mexico. The subtribe Ctenuchina has 128 species in 39 genera, while the subtribe Euchromina has 112 species in 31 genera (Hernández-Baz 1992, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011a,b). Little has been recorded about their life cycles, ecologies, trophic relations, associated parasitoids, and distributions. The genus Coreura was described by Walker (1865), and the only species recorded from Mexico is C. albicosta Draudt, 1916 (Hernández-Baz 1992). The aim of this work was to present and analyze the geographical, biological, and ecological information concerning the wasp-moth C. albicosta, which seems to be an endemic species that inhabits only the cloud forests of Mexico. As a strategy for its conservation, we propose it should be included in the Official Mexican Norm NOM-059-ECOL-2001 of species protection. Materials and Methods The geographical and ecological information on C. albicosta was obtained by the use of three sources: A) all bibliography indexed by Wiley Interscience, Blackwell Publishing, EBSCOhost, ISI-Thompson Scientific, Periódica, Latin Index, Redalyc, biodiversity library (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/), and information on 370 wasp-moths published by Druce (1894), Hampson (1898), Draudt (1916), and Hernández-Baz (1992, 2009, 2011a,b); B) the database “polilla” annex to the key collection SEMARNAT/CITES/CP-0026-VER/05, containing information on Euchromiina collected and reported for the period of time covering the years 1758- 2011; and, C) revision of the following Mexican insect collections: Natural History Museum of Mexico City (MHNCM), butterfly and moth collection of the University of Colima (UCOL), national Collection of Insects of the Institute of Biology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (CNI-IBUNAM), and the private collection SEMARNAT/CITES/CP-0026-VER/05 (CPFHB) from Xalapa, Veracruz. The insect collections of ECOSUR of San Cristóbal de las Casas (ECO-SC-E), Chetumal (ECO-CH-E), and Tapachula (ECO-TAP-E), as well as the Costa Rica InBIO data base Atta were used to verify the southernmost distribution (Inbio 2001). All records were organized in an Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft 2002). The locality georeferencing was based on the Mexican National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Computer Science catalogue of names and the 1:250000 topographic map of Mexico 1:250 (INEGI 2012). The coordinates were verified with the use of http//www.googleearth.com. All georeferenced localities were converted into sexagesimal data for inclusion in a geographical information system for the Arc view 2.0 program (ESRI 1998). The collecting and registered records of C. albicosta from Mexico were compared against the information about the distribution in the Americas of all recorded species of Mexican Ctenuchina found by Walker (1854), Druce (1886), Hampson (1898), Draudt (1916), and Zerny (1912). The records were also compared with the North