Firefly (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) species from the Atlantic Forest hotspot, Brazil.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 3,010 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Vaz S, Mendes M, Khattar G, Macedo M, Ronquillo C, Zarzo-Arias A, Hortal J, Silveira L (2023). Firefly (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) species from the Atlantic Forest hotspot, Brazil.. Version 1.17. Museu Nacional / UFRJ. Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.sibbr.gov.br/mnrj/resource?r=af_fireflies_br_01&v=1.17

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Museu Nacional / UFRJ. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: f2fafb08-f21e-4d6c-82f7-ed3463ffa03c.  Museu Nacional / UFRJ publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Brazil.

Keywords

Neotropics; Dataset; Species Occurrences; Endemism; Rainforest; South America; Neotropics; Dataset; Species Occurrences; Endemism; Rainforest; South America; Occurrence

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

The samples were collected from different areas throughout the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, including firefly records from the Northeastern to South regions (Fig. 04A-B). The data obtained from entomological collections was georeferenced by using the information in specimens’ labels and the appropriate gazetteers.

Taxonomic Coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: Lampyridae specimens consist of 35 genera and 111 species, plus 42 morphotypes which could not be identified with 100% certainty. See the "Taxa included" table below for a full list of species, and Figure 05 for the number of individuals in each genus. The 153 confirmed species in this dataset represent 7.65% of the species recorded worldwide (see Branham 2010), although it is necessary to bear in mind that the total number of Lampyridae species worldwide is still underestimated (Silveira and Mermudes 2013). The most frequently reported species was Photuris femoralis Curtis, 1839, which was recovered from 377 locations. Photinus frater (Olivier, 1905) was the second most abundant, found at 334 locations, followed by Lucidota flabellicornis Fabricius, 1781 (122), Amydetes apicalis Germar, 1824 (104) and Photinus luna Curtis, 1932 (101). The five most abundant species were from the subfamily Photurinae and Lampyrinae. The full firefly dataset was recorded from 14 ecoregions in the Atlantic Forest.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

Fireflies (Lampyridae) are among the many organisms threatened by anthropogenic stressors and climate change in the Atlantic Forest (Vaz et al. 2021, Khattar et al. 2022). They are a cosmopolitan family of about 2,200 species worldwide (Branham 2010), with most of its known diversity found in the Neotropics and Asian Southeast (Lawrence and Newton 1995). This number of species is largely underestimated due to severe taxonomic impediments, in addition to a lack of targeted sampling and experts, especially in the Neotropics (McDermott 1966, Silveira and Mermudes 2014). Indeed, Neotropical fireflies need massive nomenclatural and curatorial work, which are of utter importance to facilitate their research and conservation. Besides their relevance, fireflies are very charismatic for society (Fallon et al. 2021; Prischmann-Voldseth 2022). They are present in music, poems, paintings, and other kinds of arts, being used as a tool to foster conservation of nature through environmental education (Harvey 1957, Lenko and Papavero 1996, Faust 2004). Furthermore, they play a significant role in the economy of many countries as flagship species in ecotourism (Napompeth 2009, Lewis 2016). In addition, they are sensitive to light pollution and other forms of environmental degradation (Viviani et al. 2010, Owens et al. 2022), being important bioindicators of ecosystems’ health (Fallon 2021). Lastly, their medical importance is relevant since they prey on intermediate hosts of waterborne diseases (Viviani 1989). Even though anthropogenic threats have been investigated, the extent at which climate and land use changes impact fireflies has never been quantitatively assessed for South America. An important way to protect fireflies from these threats is to protect forest remnants at the Atlantic Forest hotspot, since protected areas act as a shelter for thousands of species. In this regard, mobilizing the biodiversity data currently stored in natural history collections and the literature can be particularly useful to conduct large-scale analyses in macroecology and conservation, provided that its coverage is adequately assessed, and field inventories are conducted to fill in the gaps that are eventually identified (Hortal et al. 2007, Ronquillo et al. 2020) Being aware of the shortfalls, particularly on species identities and distribution (Linnean and Wallacean shortfalls respectively, see Hortal et al. 2015), hamper the elaboration of predictive models that could inform on the needs for management of firefly populations. In this regard, one of the main concerns about fireflies is the absence of occurrence records publicly available in repositories, therefore making it difficult to obtain any assessment on their status.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Information on lampyrid specimens included in this study was obtained from scientific collections, literature and unpublished data from fieldwork research over nine years throughout the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. The samples were evaluated from different areas in the Brazilian coast, mainly from the Southeastern and South regions (Fig. 01), which are the most densely inhabited. Our field expeditions were done between 2013 and 2022, and encompassed the Parque Nacional da Serra dos Órgãos, Parque Nacional da Tijuca, Parque Estadual da Ilha Grande, and Parque Estadual da Pedra Branca, all placed at Rio de Janeiro State. The scientific collections digitized contained records of fireflies sampled from the 1885’s to the present. DZRJ - Coleção entomológica Prof. José Alfredo Pinheiro Dutra from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. CLEI - Coleção do Laboratório de Ecologia de Insetos from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. CEIOC - Coleção Entomológica do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. DZUP/UFPR - Coleção Entomológica Pe. Jesus Santiago Moure from Universidade Federal do Paraná, Paraná, Brazil. MZSP - Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. UFRPE - Coleção entomológica da Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Pernambuco, Brazil. Firefly species were analyzed under a stereomicroscope and we imaged characters relevant for species identification. All of them were compared to the species’ type material, when available. For specimens whose identity could not be confirmed to the species level, we included a morphotype code (“sp1”, “sp2” and so on). This code was standardized by the first author, so all specimens with the same code in the database pertain to the same morphotype. Fieldwork The surveys at Parque Nacional da Serra dos Órgãos, Parque Nacional da Tijuca, Parque Estadual da Pedra Branca, and Parque Estadual da Ilha Grande were conducted following the same protocol. We used malaise traps (Fig. 02) and active search across all habitat types and seasons, to enhance the coverage and completeness of our sampling effort. This fieldwork methodology increased the overall success of the surveys (see Silveira et al. 2020). Literature Most of the data incorporated into this dataset came from our team, which includes two leading lampyrid taxonomists: Stephanie Vaz and Luiz Silveira. Together, SV and LS have been studying and collecting fireflies since 2010, and helped build one of the most comprehensive and well curated firefly collections in the Americas. This work includes (i) the original descriptions of many of the endemic species covered in this dataset, and (ii) monographic reviews which confirmed the endemism (to the Atlantic Forest) of several other species. Data was taken from the original source (Bocakova et al. 2022; Campello-Gonçalves et al. 2019, Campello-Gonçalves et al. 2022; Silveira and Mermudes 2013, 2014a, 2014b; Silveira et al. 2015, Silveira et al. 2016a, 2016b; Silveira and Mermudes 2017; Nunes et al. 2019; Silveira et al. 2019; Silveira et al. 2020; Silveira et al. 2021; Vaz et al. 2020; Vaz et al. 2021a, 2021b).

Method step description:

1. As a traditional custom in Neotropical entomology collections, most specimens deposited in collections were preserved in entomological drawers under dry conditions. The information contained on the specimens’ labels was collected to build the dataset. Specimens from our fieldwork are preserved in ethanol >90% since the date of collection (Fig. 03), which better preserves soft-bodied insects such as fireflies, and also prevents DNA degradation.

Additional Metadata