INSECTS & AMPHIBIANS

INSECTS OF  MANU NATIONAL PARK

Stretching from southern Peru along the foothills of the eastern Andes, the Manu National Park is home of the best species-rich areas in the world. The area includes in its greatest extension a flat geography, with short, hilly and rugged regions; crossed by different watercourses, which favor the conditions for a greater diversification of its biodiversity.
The entomological community constitutes the largest component of biodiversity, with more than half (56.3%) of the number of animal species. The researchers point out that 40,000 different insect specimens live in one hectare of the Manu National Park jungle, most of them Coleoptera; which are constituted as good bioindicators of the state of conservation of ecosystems.

These organisms fulfill various ecological roles, provide important ecological services in the ecosystem, such as decomposers (allow the recycling of nutrients and waste material), consumers (they feed on matter of plant origin, favor the development of plants by pollinating crops, although they also can become pests of cultivated and wild plants), predators (they feed on other arthropods and harmful or beneficial organisms, influencing their habitat) and parasites (they control the population of other pest and non-pest arthropods, within tolerable limits both for the economy of man and the ecosystem).

AMPHIBIANS OF MANU NATIONAL PARK

A study recently published in the scientific journal «Biota Neotropica» reveals that the Manu National Park is the protected natural area with the greatest diversity of amphibians and reptiles on the planet. Rudolf von May, one of the authors of the investigation, specifies that the Manu National Park and its buffer zone found 155 species of amphibians (frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians) and 132 species of reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles and alligators).