Preliminary inventory of aquatic insects of the province of San Juan, Argentina: distribution and ecology

Abstract

A preliminary inventory of the aquatic insects of the Province of San Juan (Argentina) is provided based on its own collections and previous bibliographic records of species belonging to the orders Plecoptera, Ephemeroptera, Trichoptera, Odonata, Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and Diptera. Our objective was to obtain a list and distribution of the aquatic insects of a province with little information on the subject. For this, various types of environments, mainly rivers, were surveyed in 28 localities and 12 localities were also included from bibliographic records. A total of 46 families of insects, 107 genera and 148 species were recorded, of which 22 families, 65 genera and 82 species are new records, 17 new localities are also indicated for some species. Of the taxa recorded, 90% of the genera correspond to Neotropical distribution groups, 6% Cosmopolitan and American, while only 4% of the species have an Andean distribution.