Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz ISSN: 1678-8060 EISSN: 1678-8060 Vol. 92, Num. 3, 1997, pp. 329-332

Notes on the sand fly fauna (Diptera:Psychodidae) in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Edelberto Santos Dias+, Alda Lima Falcao, Joao Evangelista da Silva

Laboratorio de Leishmanioses, Centro de Pesquisas Rene Rachou-FIOCRUZ, Av. Augusto de Lima 1715, 30190-002 Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil

+Corresponding author. Fax: +55-31-295.3115

Received 13 September 1996; Accepted 6 January 1997

Code Number:OC97061
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The authors report the catching of 13 different species at the Aparados da Serra National Park and at the Turvo State Park in the municipalities of Cambara do Sul and Tenente Portela, respectively, both in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, where those species were practically unknown.

Key words: geographical distribution - sand fly - fauna - Phlebotominae - Brazil

Proceeding with the study of taxonomy and geographical distribution of American phleboto-mine sand flies, a trip was made to the Aparados da Serra National Park and to the Turvo State Park (State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) between 23 January and 4 February 1986. Both parks comprise areas of primitive forest and very little is known about the phlebotomine fauna in this region. Only two reports were published, more than 50 years ago, by R di Primio (1932, 1937) describing the finding of three different species of sand flies: Lutzomyia fischeri (Osorio and Sao Jose do Norte municipalities), L. intermedia (Torres and Sao Jose do Norte municipalities) and L. migonei (Sao Jose do Norte). Recently, Young and Ducan (1994) published a guide concerning the identification and geographical distribution of the genera Lutzomyia in Mexico, West Indies and Central and South Americas, but very little was available about the phlebotomine fauna in Rio Grande do Sul. Thus, we decided to acomplish some captures to contribute to the knowledge of the sand fly fauna of this southern Brazilian state.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Our study was developed in two municipalities located in the northern of Rio Grande do Sul, Cambara do Sul and Tenente Portela, near the State of Santa Catarina. Two areas were chosen to catch the specimens: (1) The Aparados da Serra National Park is located in Cambara do Sul and comprises 13,000 ha of the total area, it is formed by grey-yellowish cannyons, with up to 720 m of depth. Its vegetation is composed mainly by "araucarias" (native Brazilian pine) reaching up to 50 m of height. (2) The Turvo State Park is located in the extrem northeast of Rio Grande do Sul, on the left bank of Rio Uruguay, in the District of Derrubadas (municipality of Tenente Portela). The Park spraeds on 17,691 ha. It is the only remaining vestige of the subtropical rainy forest of the state. It spreads along side Rio Uruguay for an extension of 42 km toward Argentina in the north. In the east, south and west, its 80 km of extension are surrounded by rural properties where the soybean monoculture substitutes the primitive vegetation.

Appropriate methods for phlebotomine capture were employed (Barretto & Coutinho 1940, Sherlock & Pessoa 1964). Two different traps, based on luminous bait, were used: Chaniotis (Chaniotis & Anderson 1968) and Falcao (Falcao 1981). The Damasceno trap (Damasceno 1955) was used for capture in natural habitats, such as tree trunks and wild animal burrows. Additionally, manual captures were made with the aid of a Castro aspirator in humans and in natural habitats of wild animals, after disturbing the sand flies hiding-places with faggots or cigarette smoke. All material were captured by ES Dias and JE Silva.

The captured specimens were packed into hemolysis glass tubes containing commercial alcohol. Cotton compresses were finally introduced into the tubes for specimen protection during transportation. All the material was mounted on glass slides, using Canada balsam for the males and Berlese liquid for the females, and later examined in the laboratory.

The sand flies were identified through specific description, taxonomic keys, comparison with species of the standard collection and micrometry data.

The classifications adopted in this work were that proposed by Martins et al. (1978) and Young and Duncan (1994).

RESULTS AND REMARKS

In Cambara do Sul, despite careful investigation, only one specimen (female) of sand fly was captured: L. monticola. Meanwhile, in Tenente Portela the results were more significant, with 990 males and females specimens captured, distributed among 13 different species as shown in Table I.

Additionally, some captures were performed in Sao Joao do Sul, State of Santa Catarina. Fourty specimens of L. fischeri, a specie previously pointed out in that state by Martins et al. (1961), were captured.

Among the species captured, Brumptomyia cunhai, B. nitzulescui, L. alphabetica, L. borgmeieri, L. correalimai, L. lanei, L. misionensis, L. monticola were recorded for the first time in Rio Grande do Sul.

As far as we know, there is no record of human leishmaniases in Rio Grande do Sul. However, we verified the presence of two anthropophilic species, previously described as being involved in the transmission of Leishmania braziliensis in other Brazilian states: L. intermedia and L. migonei (Johnson et al. 1963, Forattini et al. 1972, Killick-Kendrick 1990).

As can be seen in Table II, L. intermedia was the species with higher frequency (361 specimens), performing 36.5% of the total number of specimens captured, mainly in wild animals burrows. This species presents a wide geographical distribution over Brazil, Paraguai and Argentina (Martins et al. 1978) and has been frequently described as being involved in the transmission of leishmaniases in the Brazilian states of Sao Paulo (Deane & Grimaldi 1985, Gomes et al. 1986), Rio de Janeiro (Rangel et al. 1984, 1986, 1990) and Espirito Santo (Falqueto 1995). L. intermedia was the species collected more frequently using human baits.

The second species in frequency was L. fischeri, captured mainly in rest places as tree trunks and tree hollows and inside the forest; the third was L. migonei, captured mainly with luminous baits inside the forest. Females of L. migonei infected by promastigotes in foci of Le. braziliensis have been described by Deane and Grimaldi (1985) and Lainson and Shaw (1987).

This work was supported by CNPq/FIOCRUZ.

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