Entomological inventory using McPhail traps in natural and agricultural environments in the Cerrado of Bahia, Brazil.

The use of faunistic analysis has become a pillar of studies on diversity, conservation, and global change biology, serving as quantifiers of effects on areas and their conservation status. Using McPhail traps, we inventoried a natural and an agricultural ecosystem in the Cerrado of Bahia. We found 22,498 insects in the two study areas, distributed across nine orders and 56 families. The order with the greatest richness was Diptera, with 17 families identified. Formicidae (Hymenoptera) had the largest number of specimens collected with around 48% of the total, followed by Muscidae (Diptera), with 11%, and Sarcophagidae (Diptera) and Drosophilidae (Diptera), both with 10% each. The Diversity Indices for the native forest area were H'= 1.528 and J= 0.3897, and for the polyculture area H'= 2.108 and J=0.5715, thus demonstrating greater diversity in the polyculture area. However, after recalculating the diversity indices without Formicidae, the Shannon-Weaner and Pielou indices differed, considerably increasing the indices in the native area. Our study contributes to the knowledge of entomofauna in natural and agricultural ecosystems and estimates of species diversity indices.