Western foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental in the state Sonora.

PBI collecting trip to Northern Mexico

April/May 2005: MEX’05

The trip took us from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, to Alamos, Sonora, in Mexico, crossing twice the Sierra Madre Occidental.

Chihuahua

Sonora

Ciudad Juarez

Alamos

Sierra Madre Occidental

some collecting localities

Sonora

Chihuahua

The “MEX’05” team consisted of Senior Investigator Michael Schwartz, Postdoc Christiane Weirauch and our Mexican colleague Luis Cervantes.

Among the habitats we sampled were the eastern foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Chihuahua, dominated by Quercus spp., Juniperus sp., and Pinus sp….

... as well as Acacia spp. (“mesquite”) and Opuntia sp. in altitudes of around 1600 meters.

The higher altitudes of the Sierra at around 2200 meters are characterized by oak (Quercus spp.) and pine (Pinus spp.) forests (left and right, respectively).

The Sierra gradually declines from the western slopes with oak habitat…

…to foothills dominated by Acacia spp. with columnar cacti and Parkinsonia (palo verde).

Beating on trees (left) and herbaceous vegetation (right below) are widely used methods for collecting Miridae by PBI participants, but we also saw Luis chasing Lygaeidae on the ground (top) and collecting Coreidae on Opuntia sp. (middle below).

3 nights of light trapping in different habitats using a mercury vapor lamp attracted large numbers of Hemiptera, among them many species of Miridae, but also one of Chagas transmitting Triatominae (Reduviidae).

Luis and Michael discuss the catch (left) and make notes on the locality (above) before storing collecting gear in the car.

Since Quercus spp. (Fagaceae) are more diverse in Mexico then anywhere else in the world and are known to host many Miridae, oaks were one of the focal points of our collecting efforts.

Leguminosae, among them Prosopis, revealed species of Parthenicus and Phymatopsallus.

Additional hosts of Parthenicus spp.

(on top), and Agave sp. harbored large numbers of

eccritotarsine Bryocorinae.

When we were stranded in this small

village in the Sierra for the night, Brijito,

Joanita and Rebecca welcomed us into their home in Tosanachic.

Other than Miridae, Gelastocoridae (Heteroptera) (left) attracted our attention along a little stream as well as a horned lizard (middle), roadrunners (top right) and a solifuge (bottom right).

Trip results

54 localities

110 hosts

> 8,000 Miridae