Cuterebra rufiventris Macquart, 1843

Calhau, Julia, Pereira-Colavite, Alessandre, Sepúlveda, Tatiana, Carvalho, Claudio José Barros de, Arruda, Priscylla Moll de, Nihei, Silvio Shigueo, Kosmann, Cecília, Pujol-Luz, Cristiane V. A. & Pujol-Luz, José Roberto, 2017, Checklist of the Heleomyzidae, Neriidae and Oestridae (Insecta, Diptera) in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, Iheringia, Série Zoologia (e 2017143) 107, pp. 1-5 : 3-4

Cuterebra rufiventris Macquart, 1843

Localities: Maracaju, in Cerrado macroregion. Type-locality: Brazil, Pará. Geographic distribution: Brazil (Amazonas, Pará, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina), Ecuador, Peru. Ref.: GUIMARÃES & PAPAVERO (1999); COLWELL et al. (2006).

Main research groups on Heleomyzidae , Neriidae , and Oestridae . Heleomyzidae : in Brazil, the only specialists in the family are Drs. Nelson Papavero, Julia Calhau, and Rosaly Ale Rocha. Among the most prominent taxonomists currently working with the group in other parts of the world, Dr David McAlpine (Australian Museum, Australia) and Dr Andrzej Woznika (Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Poland) can be cited.

Neriidae : the only group studying taxonomy and systematics of the family Neriidae is the Laboratório de Sistemática e Biogeografia: Diptera , in the Departamento de Zoologia of the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), with Alessandre Pereira-Colavite and Tatiana Sepúlveda.

Oestridae : according to Directory of South American Dipterists ( CARVALHO, 2009), there are no taxonomists or systematists of Oestridae nowadays. However, there is at least one research group concerned to study the systematics of Oestridae , which is the Laboratory headed by Dr. José Roberto Pujol-Luz (Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de Brasília).

Main collections. Heleomyzidae : the Heleomyzidae are very rare in entomological collections in Brazil, being the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de SÃo Paulo (MZSP) and the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (MNRJ) the most representative museums in terms of number of specimens, including type-specimens. The Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), in turn, has the largest collection of specimens of Heleomyzidae collected in Brazilian Amazon. Neriidae : the main collections of the Diptera in Brazil comprise over 2,000 specimens in the Neriidae (and the number continues to grow; CARVALHO et al., 2002). The collections include the DZUP, with 200 specimens, the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA) has 581 specimens, the Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (MNRJ) has 28 specimens, the Museu Paranaense ‘Emílio Goeldi’ of Pará (MPEG) has 285 specimens and finally, the Museu de Zoologia of the Universidade de SÃo Paulo (MZUSP) has 920 specimens.

Oestridae : species of Oestridae are extremely low represented in Brazilian collections. According to CARVALHO et al. (2002), the following institutions possess adult pinned specimens of Oestridae : Museu Nacional , Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro-RJ ( MNRJ), with 61 specimens of 18 species; Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de SÃo Paulo, SÃo Paulo-SP ( MZSP), with 32 specimens; and Departamento de Zoologia da Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba-PR ( DZUP), with four specimens of two species. There are also 35 specimens of four species of this family deposited in the entomological collection of the Universidade de Brasília (J. R. Pujol-Luz, pers. comm.) .

Main knowledge gaps in the study of Heleomyzidae , Neriidae , and Oestridae in Brazil. As several families of Acalyptratae Diptera , Heleomyzidae are considered very problematic from the standpoint of taxonomy, with wide variation in its classification throughout its history. There is a large gap in systematics knowledge of Heleomyzidae . Phylogenetic studies with the group are unavailable, and therefore the monophyly of the family and their tribes have not been tested. Knowledge about species distribution in Brazil is also quite precarious, since most records of occurrence are concentrated in well-sampled areas like Southeast Brazil. Bionomic and behavioral studies with the Brazilian species are nonexistent, and constitute a major challenge due to the rarity of specimens in the field.

Like heleomyzids, the Neriidae of Mato Grosso do Sul are poorly known for two main reasons. First, the lack of collecting studies, in contrast to the adjacent and better studies areas that include the Amazon to the north, southeastern and southern Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina to the south, and Peru and Bolivia to the west. Second, species in this family are difficult to identify and thus it is likely that zoological collections have specimens that remain unidentified.

Due to the parasitic habit of oestrids, the majority of the studies concerning this group are focused on medical and veterinary studies (e.g. MOYA-BORJA et al., 1993; GOMES et al., 1996), or on the findings of hosts carrying oestrids eggs (e.g. BRUM et al., 1996; GOMES et al., 2002, 1998; MARCHI et al., 2012; MARINHO et al., 2003). Taxonomic studies for the Neotropical fauna were mainly published by Dr José Henrique GuimarÃes and Dr Nelson Papavero ( GUIMARÃES & CARRERA, 1941; GUIMARÃES, 1966, 1967a,b,c, 1971, 1984 1989; GUIMARÃES & PAPAVERO, 1966, 1999; PAPAVERO & GUIMARÃES, 2008). Regarding the systematics, the major publication is the Oestridae phylogeny by PAPE (2001) recovering the phylogenetic relationships among the world genera of Oestridae .

Besides the major interest in Oestridae by veterinary and medical research, there is also the difficulty in collecting these flies. The maggots can only be collected in their hosts, which requires very distinct equipment and methods of collection, in comparison to free-living dipterous collection. The adults have an extremely short life, being rarely seen by specialists in the field or collected by their traps. For all these reasons, a larger collection effort covering different locations, at different periods of the year, is needed in order to better sample the diversity of the family and provide material for further systematic studies of the group.

Prospects for study for the next 10 years. Future study of the families over the next 10 years is strongly linked to the development of the SISBIOTA project for the westerncentral region of Brazil, especially in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso do Sul.