Bakukang, et al. Notes 02: Insects and Spiders in my backyard

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[Main] [Bakukang, et al. Notes]

Arthropod diversity is high in the tropics (Basset, 2012). In fact, arthropods holds the place for most diverse among all animals (Zhang, 2011).

In 1998, a national report in Philippine Biological diversity estimated the number of species of arthropds to be 25,000+ [4]. New species of insects are still being discovered every year (.Cabras & Median, 2019; Anichtchenko & Medina, 2020)

If you are in the tropics, try to look around even in your backyard for insects and spiders and you will discover how diverse it truly is. Here in my backyard, I have photographed quite a few. The insects below were found in a small area at the back of our house. Figure 2 shows the area where the insects were observed except for figure 1-G&J. This area has three species of tress, but all of the insects were observed in the Philippine lime tree (Citrofortunella microcarpa), locally known as lemonsito.



 Figure 1. Insects from my backyard.

Figure 2. Backyard sampling area.

These insects were only observed at certain months of the year. Fully grown adults of the specimen in figure 1-H, for example, were observed in the months of February and March only.

Insects are not the only ones that were observed. Spiders are also present. Here are a few of the jumping spiders I was able to photograph. All of the specimens below were collected from the lemonsito tree only.

Figure 3. Jumping spiders from the backyard Citrofortunella microcarpa.

References:

[1] Anichtchenko, A. and Medina, M.M. 2020. Contribution to the knowledge of three species of the genus Thopeutica Schaum, 1861 from the Philippines (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Cicindelidae). Zootaxa. Vol. 4748(2): 389-395.

[2]  Basset, Y., Cizek, L., Cuenod, P, et. al. 2012. Arthropod Diversity in a Tropical Forest. Science 338, 1481-1484.

[3] Cabras, A.A. and Medina, M.N.D. 2019. Metapocyrtus ginalopezae sp.n., a new Orthocyrtus from Davao de Oro, Mindanao Island. Baltic Journal of Coleopterology. Vol. 19(2); 205-211.

[4] The First Philippine National report to the Convention on Biological Diversity. May 1998. Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Republic of the Philippines. Retrieved from: https://www.cbd.int/doc/world/ph/ph-nr-01-en.pdf

[5] Zhang, Z. Q. 2011. Animal biodiversity: An introduction to higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. Zootaxa 3148; 7-12.

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