ABSTRACT
Epilogue With present-day pollution and urbanization, it is certain that the biodiversity of plants and animals is diminishing very quickly. This destruction is impos sible to evaluate correctly. However, there are still a great number of fungi, cryptogams, and vascular plants surviving and feeding arthropods. With about 300,000 living species of vascular plants, the diversity is really enor mous and the number of insects has been estimated to be 100 times that figure. In a country such as Brazil, the Atlantic forest has been cut down more than 80%, and some of the original fauna has already disappeared. Some people, however, suggest that beetles and butterflies persist in refuge locali ties. This may be true for butterflies, but it is not true for apterous beetles — for instance, leaf beetles. The primary forest is cut, the host plant does not survive among the secondary new growth, and a dozen species of the genus Elytrosphaera, for example, are condemned to extinction rather rapidly. They feed on Asteraceae growing exclusively in forest openings (Adenostemma spp.) and on Solanaceae.
