Mites associated to Xylopia aromatica (Lam.) Mart. (Annonaceae) in urban and rural fragments of semidecidual forest

mites associated to xylopia aromatica (lam.) mart. (annonaceae) in urban and rural fragments of semidecidual forest. native plants can shelter a great diversity of mites. notwithstanding, the conservation of the forest fragments where the plants are located can influence the structure of the mites community. generally, in homogenous environments the diversity is lower due to the dominance of one or a few species. in this work, we studied the mite community on xylopia aromatica (lam.) mart. (annonaceae) in two fragments of semidecidual forest: one on rural and other on urban area. seven individuals of x. aromatica were monthly sampled from april 2007 to march 2008, in each of these fragments. descriptive indexes of diversity, dominance and evenness were applied to verify the ecological patterns of the mite community, besides the student's t-test to compare the abundance between the fragments. we collected 27,365 mites of 37 species belonging to 11 families. calacarus sp. (eriophyidae) was the most abundant species, representing 73% of the total sampled. the abundance was greater in the urban fragment (67.7%), with the diversity index reaching only 25% of the theoretical maximum expected. probably, these values might have been influenced by the location of this fragment in the urban area, being more homogeneous and submitted directly to the presence of atmospheric pollution. in this manner, x. aromatica is able to shelter a higher diversity of mites when inserted in preserved ecosystems, since the highest diversity of available resources allows the establishment of richer and most diverse mite community.