Collembola fauna of the South Shetland Islands revisited

Abstract

A review of the collembolan fauna of the South Shetland Islands is presented. Cryptopygus nanjiensis Yue & Tamura is synonymized with C. antarcticus Willem. A record of Tullbergia mediantarctica Wise from King George Island is considered a misidentification of Tullbergia mixta Wahlgren and Tillieria penai Weiner & Najt, described from the same island, is synonymized with T. mixta. The current fauna stands at eleven species, of which at least three are introduced. A checklist of Collembola currently considered to occur in the South Shetland Islands is supplied with distributional data.

Exotic Collembola on subantarctic islands: pathways, origins and biology

“…Second, some indication of possible future invaders was given by Frenot et al (2005), who listed 11 species of Collembola known from all subantarctic islands, although this list does have some errors and omissions (corrected and updated in Table 2) such as the listing of Proisotoma minuta (Tullberg) as the invalid name, Parisotoma minutea Tullberg. Altogether Frenot et al (2005) recorded five naturalised species from Macquarie Island, and Greenslade (2006) recorded a further five synanthropic species, three of which are now naturalised (Greenslade 2010). Greenslade 2010 recorded an additional naturalised species on the island, Isotomurus palustris (Müller), bringing the total recorded to a possible 11, of which nine are certain naturalised species.…”

“…Travé and Deharveng (1981) noted that exotic species were more abundant in degraded soils, and were only found near manmade structures. The largest number (11 of the 24 reported species) of exotic Collembola has been reported on Macquarie Island, which compares with a native fauna of 24 species (Greenslade 2006;Greenslade 2010). Five were found only in the now demolished glasshouses, of which three have since been found outside the glasshouses area, while the other two have not and may be locally extinct.…”

“…Species such as those first collected on obvious inoculation sites such as rubbish dumps, in greenhouses or in hydroponics installations fall into this category (Greenslade 2006;Greenslade 2010). …”

High levels of genetic structuring in the Antarctic springtailCryptopygus terranovus

“…Twentyfive Antarctic springtail species are distributed across the few ice-free areas (Greenslade 1995), which correspond to a negligible 0.3% of the entire landmass (Sinclair & Stevens 2006). Endemic taxa are isolated from other springtail species, living in neighbouring continents, due to the geographical position of Antarctica and the barrier effect caused by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (Fraser et al 2012); although a handful of recent invasive species have successfully established in localities with geothermal activity (Greenslade 2010). In addition, due to their limited dispersal capabilities and sensitivity to dehydration, springtail populations are also frequently isolated from one another because their habitats are fragmented and positioned between glaciers, mountain chains or open sea resulting in a chance of survival close to zero when specimens are subject to long-range aerial phoresis or hydrochory.…”

Synonymy of two monobasic Anurophorinae genera (Collembola: Isotomidae) from the Antarctic Continent

“…An additional three species of Cryptopygus are known from the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc Islands: Cryptopygus antarcticus antarcticus Willem, 1901 (type locality Gerlache Straits); Cryptopygus caecus (Wahlgren, 1906) (type locality South Georgia); and Cryptopygus badasa Greenslade, 1995 (type locality Livingston Island, Shetland Islands) (Greenslade 2010;Greenslade et al 2012). These species have wider distributions and are also found on subantarctic and maritime Antarctic islands.…”