Can highland habitat type distributions replace mapping of harvestman species?

Environmental factors influencing the distribution of habitat types in the highlands of the Kamnik − Savinja Alps

“…On the other hand, some other taxa, e.g. harvestmen, do not show any association with HT distributions, but instead reveal specific ecological requirements (Novak et al 2017).…”

“…The digitally modelled datasets efficiently represented the average values of selected geographical, physical, meteorological and paedological parameters, while the field research provided the only data on microhabitats. It is, therefore, useful to combine both datasets when available (Novak et al 2017;Zellweger et al 2019). Furthermore, the available field observations can be intersected with layers of different environmental data from optical and radar images, providing the opportunity to derive models for reliable predictions of all other locations of these HTs in the area (Minasny et al 2019).…”

“…butterflies (Pellissier et al 2013;Leingärtner et al 2014;Čelik et al 2015), but not to some others, e.g. harvestmen (Novak et al 2017). However, studies on congruent variation in species richness patterns in alpine habitats are scarce (Finch and Löffler 2010).…”

“…Väre et al 2003;Casazza et al 2008;Dirnböck et al 2011) and several studies have addressed the relationships between biota and environmental conditions (e.g. Reutter et al 2003;Kryštufek et al 2015;Rosbakh et al 2015;Mathar et al 2016;Novak et al 2017). In nature conservation areas, such knowledge is particularly valued as this is the basic information needed to understand community distribution patterns.…”