The scale insect (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha) collection of the entomological museum “Universidad Nacional Agronomía Bogotá”, and its impact on Colombian coccidology

Abstract

Acquisition of local and global biodiversity knowledge demands immediate and long-term efforts, both tutoring new generations of taxonomists and establishing, maintaining and improving research collections. Through biodiversity studies, the entomological museum “Universidad Nacional Agronomía Bogotá” (Bogotá, Colombia) has been developed and has built up a substantial collection of scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha), with 7,052 slide-mounted specimens and close to 800 alcohol-preserved samples representing 115 species belonging to 59 genera and nine families. This insect group is exclusively phytophagous, and many species are pests on economically important crops in Colombia. Curation of scale insect specimens includes slide mounting, identification, cataloging and databasing. Ecological and geospatial analyses of field data have identified insect-host interactions, and areas of the country where new field collections should be made. Host-insect interaction analysis has shown that coffee is the host-plant with the largest number of associated scales, Rhizoecus cacticans (Hambleton, 1946) and Rh. colombiensis Ramos & Caballero, 2016 are the scale species with the largest host-plant range; and Geococcus coffeae Green, 1933 and Puto barberi (Cockerell, 1895) are the commonest scale species. Altitudinal and geographic distribution analysis have shown that sampling efforts have been concentrated in the central region, while the northern and southeastern regions of Colombia have been poorly collected. These analyses provide a guideline for future studies, such as which zones should be sampled and which host-plant species have information gaps in their documented distributions and scale insect-host interactions. The museum’s large number of specimens, species diversity representation and rich associated biological data indicate that the scale insect collection of the “Universidad Nacional Agronomía Bogotá” entomological museum is the most important in Colombia. Más...