Estrutura e composição de comunidades de tricladidos terrestres (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Terricola) em áreas de floresta estacional decidual do sul do Brasil

Abstract

Land flatworms constitute a relatively species rich zoological group, being distributed world wide, but mainly pan-tropical. They show very strict habitat requirements and a reduced locomotion capacity, so that there are many endemic species. Their use as indicator-taxa in conservation and biodiversity studies is recomended because land planarians are top-predatores within their soil ecosystem. In Brazil, the diversity of land planarians is better known in areas that were originally covered by the southeastern dense ombrophilous forest, located in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro e Santa Catarina. Recent studies on the composition and structure of land planarian communities, mainly done in the region of the Planalto das Araucárias, located at the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul state, in areas of mixed and dense ombrophilous forest, have registered high species richness in various localities, many of the species being new taxa and/or endemic for each type of forest. The caducifolious forest is one of th