Biodiversidade de tardígrados limnoterrestres da UFRPE - Campus Dois Irmãos (Sede)

Abstract

Tardigrades, known as water bears, are cosmopolitan invertebrates, found in all biomes on Earth, from very cold places (Arctic and Antarctica) to hot springs. They are animals that are only active surrounded by water, and when they are deprived of it they enter cryptobiosis, their extraordinary survival technique. Despite this ability to survive in extreme environments through cryptobiosis leaving everyone awestruck and having boosted research on them a few decades ago, tardigrades are still little studied, which is attributed to their still unknown economic, medical or even ecological importance. In the present study, we seek to know the biodiversity of limnoterrestrial tardigrades on the main campus of UFRPE, in the neighborhood of Dois Irmãos in Recife (PE), in addition to enriching the scarce literature about these charming beings. With this, collections were made at 5 points on the university campus, in order to record the biodiversity of tardigrades found in the different substrates sampled. Samples of mosses, liverworts and lichens were stored in paper envelopes and subsequently sorted following methodologies found in the literature. After definitive preparation of the specimens found, identification was carried out using a binocular microscope (100X magnification by immersion) and taxonomic keys. Our results were quite rewarding, since we found two genera that had their first occurrence records for the state of Pernambuco (Bryodelphax sp. Thulin, 1928 and Murrayon sp. Bertolani & Pilato, 1988) and a genus with the first record for the country (Xerobiotus sp. Bertolani & Biserov, 1996), thus achieving our objective of contributing to the knowledge of the biodiversity of limnoterrestrials tardigrades from Pernambuco and Brazil, in addition to opening new perspectives regarding their study in the approached locality.