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Coprophanaeus lancifer is a copro-necrophagous beetle endemic to the Amazon region. Although beetles belonging to the subfamily Scarabaeinae primarily feed on dung, some have a greater diet plasticity that includes carrion, fungi, rotten fruits and invertebrates. The diet of the scavenger beetle C. lancifer mainly consists of vertebrate carcasses, although it is also attracted to mammal faeces. Here, we describe the first record of this species feeding on fruits of the genus Nectandra.

Ecological communities of tropical regions respond to habitat configuration, being negatively affected by anthropogenic habitats. In the tropics, mountainous highland landscapes sustain ecological communities with contrasting responses to habitat transformation. This study assessed the effect of different habitats under different disturbance regimes on the dung beetle assemblage that inhabits a mountainous Andean landscape in Colombia. The habitat types surveyed were oak forest cores (low intervention), forest edges (medium intervention), and pastures (high intervention). A total of 3,810 dung beetles from ten species were collected. Dung beetle diversity was affected by habitat type, and forest cores and forest edges had higher diversity than pastures. Besides, each habitat type was characterized by a distinct dung beetle assemblage, with pastures showing the highest heterogeneity in the dung beetle assemblage. In conclusion, our study suggests that the dung beetles of a portion of Colombian Andean landscapes are sensitive to shifts of habitat quality. The higher dung beetle diversity in forested habitats indicates that pastures comprise limiting environments for their assemblages at this Andean region.

Knowledge on the mycoheterotrophic genus Thismia (Thismiaceae) in the neotropics is scarce, where the majority of species are known from Brazil, with 13 currently accepted species, of which seven are endemics. All the 15 known species of the genus in the Americas, except T. americana, inhabit forests below 1300 m a.s.l. Two species of Thismia are known from Colombia, T. panamensis from the Chocó biogeographical region and T. glaziovii from the Amazonian region. Here we describe a third Colombian species, T. andicola sp. nov. distinguished by having outer surface of the floral tube light blue and densely punctate with sky-blue metallic dots, inner tepals 4.6–5 mm long and stigma obovoid, covered adaxially by regularly distributed simple uniseriate multicellular trichomes. It is collected in the buffer zone of the Tamá National Park, Norte de Santander and is the first species of Thismia recorded from the Andes, and the first American species found above 2000 m a.s.l. We provide a description, drawings, photographs, distribution map, and the provisional conservation status of the new species. A key to species of Thismia sect. Ophiomeris species is also included.

We present a review of Scatimus Erichson (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae: Ateuchini: Scatimina) in Colombia, with the description of S. strenua new species from the Central Andes (Antioquia Department). Records of S. strandi Balthasar from southwestern Colombia (Caquetá and Nariño Departments) are validated. The distributions of S. ovatus Harold from the Magdalena, Chocó-Darién, and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta provinces and S. fernandezi Martínez in the eastern foothills of the Eastern Cordillera (Orinoco-Amazon) are confirmed. New departmental records and distribution maps for Colombia are presented; an updated key for the taxonomic identification of Scatimus is included. With a total of four species, Colombia has the second highest Scatimus species richness of any country.

A new species, Ateuchus tona, from the eastern Andes of Colombia is described and illustrated. The unique set of characters of this species, particularly the unusual sexual dimorphism in the sixth abdominal ventrite, which is largely expanded medially only in males, clearly separates this species from all other known species of Ateuchus. The species was found in 2004 during a single sampling event in a protected area. Since in Colombia most of the cloud forests are subject to extensive deforestation, additional sampling is needed to gather information about the species' conservation status. Additionally, two species, A. parvus and A. freudei, new to Colombia are presented rising the number of the Ateuchus species known for the country to eleven.

Here we present the first distribution record for Eurysternus foedus in the Macizo de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta province (Magdalena, Colombia) as the result of species inventory in the RNN El Congo, Municipio of Cienaga. Even though this specie is widely distributed it had not been previously collected in any of the recent studies developed in the region. This adds to the species richness of theSierra and highlights the overall lack of information on this provincebiodiversity.

La primera Expedición de Biodiversidad Colombia BIO - Instituto Humboldt se llevó a cabo en el municipio del Peñón en Santander, con el objetivo de abordar la diversidad de fauna y flora en los ecosistemas subterráneos (endocársticos) y los ambientes superficiales (exocársticos) asociados a las cuevas. Bogotá Subdirección de Investigaciones

Dung beetles of the subfamily Scarabaeinae are widely recognised as important providers of multiple ecosystem services and are currently experiencing revisions that have improved our understanding of higher-level relationships in the subfamily. However, the study of phylogenetic relationships at the level of genus or species is still lagging behind. In this study we investigated the New World beetle genus Dichotomius, one of the richest within the New World Scarabaeinae, using the most comprehensive molecular and morphological dataset for the genus to date (in terms of number of species and individuals). Besides evaluating phylogenetic relationships, we also assessed species delimitation through a novel Bayesian approach (iBPP) that enables morphological and molecular data to be combined. Our findings support the monophyly of the genus Dichotomius but not that of the subgenera Selenocopris and Dichotomius sensu stricto (s.s). Also, our results do not support the recent synonymy of Selenocopris with Luederwaldtinia. Some species-groups within the genus were recovered, and seem associated with elevational distribution. Our species delimitation analyses were largely congruent irrespective of the set of parameters applied, but the most robust results were obtained when molecular and morphological data were combined. Although our current sampling and analyses were not powerful enough to make definite interpretations on the validity of all species evaluated, we can confidently recognise D. nisus, D. belus and D. mamillatus as valid and well differentiated species. Overall, our study provides new insights into the phylogenetic relationships and classification of dung beetles and has broad implications for their systematics and evolutionary analyses.

Taboada-Verona, Carlos, Ayazo, Roger, Lopera-Toro, Alejandro (2017): New Distribution Records of Ontherus brevipennis Harold, 1867 and Ontherus lichyi Martínez, 1947 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in Colombia. The Coleopterists Bulletin 71 (3): 635-638, DOI: 10.1649/0010-065X-71.3.635, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1649/0010-065x-71.3.635

In this paper, diversity and composition of dung beetles assemblage was study in three urbanized areas with different ecological characteristics from Sucre department , Colombia. Individuals were captured with baited pitfall traps. Sampling effort, range-abundance curves, alpha and beta diversity indices were estimated and compared among the sites. Seven hundred ten individuals grouped into nine genera and 13 species were recorded. The completeness analysis yielded values above 97%. The most diverse assemblage in any of the three orders of "q" was found in the site with a mixture of buildings, gardens, and a patch of secondary vegetation forest, followed by the site with few facilities and open green spaces, and the least diverse site corresponded to the area surrounded by buildings with little vegetation cover. Sorensen-Dice index similarity among the three sites was 38%. The range-abundance curves showed higher species equitability in the most diverse site. The results show that the beetle assemblage composition depends on environmental conditions and the degree of urbanization. It was also evident that some species have high adaptability to urban spaces and others are potentially at risk of local extinction events., En el presente trabajo se estudia la diversidad de escarabajos coprófagos en tres zonas urbanizadas del departamento de Sucre, Colombia, cada una con características ecológicas distintas. Los individuos fueron capturados con trampas de caída cebadas. Se analizaron el esfuerzo de muestreo, las curvas de rango-abundancia y los índices de diversidad alfa y beta. Se capturaron 710 individuos, agrupados en nueve géneros y 13 especies. El análisis de completitud arrojó valores por encima del 97%. El ensamble más diverso en cualquiera de los tres órdenes de “q” se encontró en la zona que alberga edificaciones, jardines y un parche de bosque de vegetación secundaria, seguido por una zona de pastizales, con pocas edificaciones; el ensamble de menor diversidad correspondió a la zona rodeada de edificaciones y con escasa cobertura vegetal. El índice de Sorensen-Dice arrojó una similitud total entre las tres zonas del 38%. Las curvas de rango-abundancia mostraron mayor equidad de especies en la zona más diversa. Los resultados indicaron que la composición del ensamble de escarabajos depende de las condiciones ambientales y el grado de urbanización. Así mismo, se evidenció que algunas especies pueden tener alta adaptabilidad y que algunas de ellas corren el riesgo potencial de presentar eventos de extinción local.