Ríos-Touma Blanca, Holzenthal Ralph W, Huisman Jolanda, Thomson Robin, Rázuri-Gonzales Ernesto
Facultad de Ingenierías y Ciencias Agropecuarias, Ingeniería Ambiental/Unidad de Biotecnología y Medio Ambiente -BIOMA-, Universidad de las Americas , Campus Queri, Calle José Queri, Quito , Ecuador.
Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Campus , Saint Paul , MN , United States.
PeerJ. 2017 Jan 12;5:e2851. doi: 10.7717/peerj.2851. eCollection 2017.
Aquatic insects and other freshwater animals are some of the most threatened forms of life on Earth. Caddisflies (Trichoptera) are highly biodiverse in the Neotropics and occupy a wide variety of freshwater habitats. In Andean countries, including Ecuador, knowledge of the aquatic biota is limited, and there is a great need for baseline data on the species found in these countries. Here we present the first list of Trichoptera known from Ecuador, a country that harbors two global biodiversity "hotspots."
We conducted a literature review of species previously reported from Ecuador and supplemented these data with material we collected during five recent field inventories from about 40 localities spanning both hotspots. Using species presence data for each Ecuadorian province, we calculated the CHAO 2 species estimator to obtain the minimum species richness for the country.
We recorded 310 species, including 48 new records from our own field inventories for the country. CHAO 2 calculations showed that only 54% of the species have been found. Hydroptilidae and Hydropsychidae were the most species rich families. We report the family Xiphocentronidae for the first time from Ecuador as well as several new records of genera from different families.
As in the neighboring Andean countries of Colombia and Peru, it is common to find undescribed species of caddisflies. There are vast areas of Ecuador and the northern Andes that are completely unexplored, and we expect that hundreds of new species are yet to be discovered.
水生昆虫和其他淡水动物是地球上受威胁最严重的一些生物形式。毛翅目昆虫（毛翅目）在新热带地区具有高度的生物多样性，占据了各种各样的淡水栖息地。在包括厄瓜多尔在内的安第斯国家，对水生生物群的了解有限，非常需要这些国家所发现物种的基线数据。在此，我们列出了厄瓜多尔已知的首个毛翅目昆虫名录，该国拥有两个全球生物多样性“热点地区”。
我们对先前报道的来自厄瓜多尔的物种进行了文献综述，并通过我们在最近五次实地清查中从两个热点地区约40个地点收集的材料对这些数据进行了补充。利用厄瓜多尔每个省份的物种存在数据，我们计算了CHAO 2物种估计量，以获得该国的最小物种丰富度。
我们记录了310个物种，包括我们自己在该国实地清查中的48个新记录。CHAO 2计算结果表明，仅发现了54%的物种。纹石蛾科和长角石蛾科是物种最丰富的科。我们首次报道了厄瓜多尔的剑石蛾科以及不同科的几个属的新记录。
与邻国哥伦比亚和秘鲁等安第斯国家一样，常见未描述的毛翅目昆虫物种。厄瓜多尔和安第斯山脉北部有大片地区完全未被探索，我们预计还有数百个新物种有待发现。
