Biodiversity of tropical Homoptera, with the first data from Africa

Abstract

Measuring biodiversity provides the base-line information on distribution, richness, and relative abundance of taxa that is needed for conservation decisions, studies of ecosystem ecology, and cladistic biogeography. Considering the immense contribution of insects to the world's biota, any general explanations of diversity should account for patterns of insects. The advantage of working with hyperdiverse taxa is that there are surely many repeated patterns, which are the clues to processes. The richness also presents a challenge: in most habitats the true richness of major taxa can never be observed, so estimating species richness requires quantitative sampling. The purpose of this article is to review past quantitative studies of Homoptera, principally Auchenorrhyncha, in tropical forests and to describe the first such study in Africa, which examines the altitudinal patterns of homopteran species richness and composition compared to that of the plant community.