Ecologia de flebotomíneos (Diptera: Psychodidae) coletados em cavernas do estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil

Caves, though seemingly inhospitable due to the lack of light in areas furthest from the cave entrance and the low availability and variety of resources, can harbor many species of vertebrates and invertebrates, including phlebotomine sand flies, the vectors of species of parasites of the genus Leishmania that cause leishmaniasis. Thus, caves represent an important setting for testing hypotheses about the patterns of sand fly distribution. Here, we tested the hypothesis that there is high beta diversity between caves and their surroundings, and that this diversity, if it indeed exists, is driven more by species replacement (individuals of different species are replaced between sites) than by abundance difference (difference in the total abundances of the species between sites). The collections of sand flies were performed with automatic light traps in cave environments and their surroundings at three locations in southeastern Brazil in the state of Minas Gerais. We partitioned beta diversity into species replacement and abundance difference between cave environments and their respective surroundings to infer biological mechanisms from the patterns of distribution of sand flies between these environments. A total of 722 phlebotomine sand flies were collected with the most abundant species being Evandromyia tupynambai (28%), Evandromyia edwardsi (19%), Brumptomyia troglodytes (14%), and Psychodopygus lloydi (11%). The beta diversity between each cave and its surroundings was high, and determined mostly by species replacement in caves that had an aphotic zone and was mostly determined by abundance difference in cave that did not have an aphotic zone. Therefore, our results suggest that both caves and their surroundings are important for the maintenance of sand fly communities, and that the peculiar characteristics of caves have presumably led to differences in the sand fly communities found within and surrounding caves.