Ceratozygum horridum (Germar, 1839)

Perger, Robert, do Amaral, Karina Bohrer & Bianchi, Filipe Michels, 2021, Distribution modelling of the rare stink bug Ceratozygum horridum (Germar, 1839): isolated in small spots across the Neotropics or a continuous population?, Journal of Natural History 55 (11 - 12), pp. 649-663 : 657-658

Ceratozygum horridum rarity or lack of knowledge?

The Wallacean shortfall – the geographic distribution of most species is incomplete and poorly described at all scales ( Lomolino 2004) – is a critical gap for different branches of biology. It is substantial in many biomes and ecoregions of the Neotropics, such as Amazon ( Hortal et al. 2015), the dry diagonal ( Werneck et al. 2012), and even in the political unities ( Hortal et al. 2015), which may comprise heterogeneous landscapes. In Bolivia, where C. horridum is recorded for the first time, in two different ecoregions, the fauna of arthropods is poorly known (e.g. Perger and Grossi 2013; Perger 2015; Perger and Guerra 2015, 2016; Perger and Santos-Silva 2018). The lack of information about the regional fauna hinders the access to parameters used to quantify biodiversity and then compromises the understanding of the biogeography, macroecology and conservation in different scales ( Oliveira et al. 2016). The SDMs hint priority areas to samplings of specific taxa, boosting filling the gaps on distributional records.

The cyrtocorines are not commonly found neither in nature nor museum collections ( Grazia et al. 2015). The literature is scarce on biological data about C. horridum , lacking elementary information, e.g. specific host plants, vegetation strata of occurrence, preferences of specific parts of the host (i.e. stems, branches, leaves, or flowers), seasonal patterns, longevity. In the present study, field trips explored distinct ecoregions of Bolivia ( Table 1), and despite the efforts, C. horridum specimens were sampled only in two locations with very low abundances. Thus, as far as we can infer, C. horridum occurs in low densities across its distribution.