SLAM Project - Long Term Ecological Study of the Impacts of Climate Change in the natural forests of Azores: V - New records of terrestrial arthropods after ten years of SLAM sampling

Abstract

A long-term study monitoring arthropods (Arthropoda) is being conducted since 2012 in the forests of Azorean Islands. Named "SLAM - Long Term Ecological Study of the Impacts of Climate Change in the natural forest of Azores", this project aims to understand the impact of biodiversity erosion drivers in the distribution, abundance and diversity of Azorean arthropods. The current dataset represents arthropods that have been recorded using a total of 42 passive SLAM traps (Sea, Land and Air Malaise) deployed in native, mixed and exotic forest fragments in seven Azorean Islands (Flores, Faial, Pico, Graciosa, Terceira, São Miguel and Santa Maria). This manuscript is the fifth data-paper contribution, based on data from this long-term monitoring project. We targeted taxa for species identification belonging to Arachnida (excluding Acari), Chilopoda, Diplopoda, Hexapoda (excluding Collembola, Lepidoptera, Diptera and Hymenoptera (but including only Formicidae)). Specimens were sampled over seven Azorean Islands during the 2012-2021 period. Spiders (Araneae) data from Pico and Terceira Islands are not included since they have been already published elsewhere (Costa and Borges 2021, Lhoumeau et al. 2022). We collected a total of 176007 specimens, of which 168565 (95.7%) were identified to the species or subspecies level. For Araneae and some Hemiptera species, juveniles are also included in this paper, since the low diversity in the Azores allows a relatively precise species-level identification of this life-stage. We recorded a total of 316 named species and subspecies, belonging to 25 orders, 106 families and 260 genera. The ten most abundant species were mostly endemic or native non-endemic (one Opiliones, one Archaeognatha and seven Hemiptera) and only one exotic species, the Julida Ommatoiulus moreleti (Lucas, 1860). These ten species represent 107330 individuals (60%) of all sampled specimens and can be considered as the dominant species in the Azorean native forests for the target studied taxa. The Hemiptera were the most abundant taxa, with 90127 (50.4%) specimens. The Coleoptera were the most diverse with 30 (28.6%) families. We registered 72 new records for many of the islands (two for Flores, eight for Faial, 24 for Graciosa, 23 for Pico, eight for Terceira, three for São Miguel and four for Santa Maria). These records represent 58 species. None of them is new to the Azores Archipelago. Most of the new records are introduced species, all still with low abundance on the studied islands. This publication contributes to increasing the baseline information for future long-term comparisons of the arthropods of the studied sites and the knowledge of the arthropod fauna of the native forests of the Azores, in terms of species abundance, distribution and diversity throughout seasons and years.

SLAM Project - Long Term Ecological Study of the Impacts of Climate Change in the natural forest of Azores: VI - Inventory of Arthropods of Azorean Urban Gardens

“…This is the sixth dataset contribution for this project (previous ones in Costa and Borges (2021) , Borges et al (2022b) , Borges et al (2022a) , Lhoumeau et al (2022) , Lhoumeau and Borges (2022) ). Another publication dedicated to Lepidoptera contributed with information about some new exotic species for Azores ( Pérez Santa-Rita et al 2018 ).…”

Biological Integrity of Azorean Native Forests Is Better Measured in Cold Season

“…Under long-term monitoring studies (BALA I, II, III, SLAM projects) of up to 25 years, arthropods have been monitored using different types of techniques (SLAM traps, canopy beating, pitfall traps, handling, etc.). See team publications [26][27][28][29] to learn more about the different sampling techniques and arthropod identification. These projects, which have lasted nearly 30 years, have generated a massive amount of data that are made available to the public [1,27] in open sources.…”

An updated checklist of Azorean arthropods (Arthropoda)

“…A large number of new records for the islands are based on recently published articles (e.g. Stüben and Borges (2019) , Carvalho et al (2021) , Costa and Borges (2021) , Marcelino et al (2021) , Soares et al (2021) , Tsafack et al (2021) , Borges et al (2021) , Borges et al (2022a) , Borges et al (2022b) , Lhoumeau et al (2022a) , Lhoumeau et al (2022b) ) and one currently in evaluation (e.g. Boieiro et al (2022) ).…”

“…Currently, we are conducting a long-term monitoring of Azorean arthopods in native forests (see Lhoumeau et al (2022a) , Lhoumeau et al (2022b) ) which are contributing with many new records for the Azores Islands, but more importantly, providing information about the trends in species temporal and spatial turnover ( Matthews et al 2019 , Borges et al 2020 ). The Azores constitute an ideal model system for a long-term monitoring study because: 1) they possess a unique forest type in Europe, resembling the lost temperate forests of the Tertiary and about 5% of which remain, including some pristine areas of great ecological importance ( Triantis et al 2010 ); 2) they are one of the most isolated archipelagos in the world, harbouring a significant number of single island endemics.…”

“…Multi-taxa research include also many publications (e.g. Borges et al 2018b , Arteaga et al 2020 , Borges et al 2021 , Marcelino et al 2021 , Tsafack et al 2021 , Borges et al 2022b , Tsafack et al 2022 , Lhoumeau et al 2022a , Lhoumeau et al 2022b ).…”