Diversity pattern of insects from Macao based on an updated species checklist after 25 years.

In this study, we systematically sorted out major references items of manuals or handbooks, monographs, articles, dissertations, official websites and other publicly available information sources about the insects recorded in Macao and, thus, generated a checklist of 15 orders, 166 families, 868 genera, 1,339 species and 118 subspecies. During this process, the preliminarily summarised list was re-examined to eliminate synonyms and invalid species, based on many more extensive literature reviews. Besides, spelling errors of scientific names, authors and years were corrected. Meanwhile, the catalogue revealed a different composition pattern of species diversity between orders from those of the world and China. Even based on the most conservative estimates, the number of insect species in Macao should not be lower than 3,340 species, which hints at the necessity of deeper investigations with adequate collecting in the future to achieve more comprehensive recognition and understanding of Macao's insect biodiversity.