Spretthaler - jordas små kaniner

Spretthaler er en gruppe med små dyr som lever i vegetasjonen, i strølaget og nedover i selve jorda til ca 15 cm dyp. De er viktige omdannere og nedbrytere av dødt plantemateriale og bidrar vesentlig til sirkulering av næringsstoffer

The invertebrate fauna of anthropogenic soils in the High-Arctic settlement of Barentsburg, Svalbard

The terrestrial environment of the High Arctic consists of a mosaic of habitat types. In addition to the natural habitat diversity, various human-influenced types may occur. For the resident invertebrate fauna, these anthropogenic habitats may be either unusually favourable or detrimental. In the town of Barentsburg, Svalbard, soils were imported for the greenhouses from southern Russia. These soils were subsequently discarded outside the greenhouses and have become augmented with manure from the cowsheds. Both the greenhouse and the cowsheds are now derelict. This site represents an unusually nutrient-rich location with considerable development of organic soils, in stark contrast to the naturally forming organic soils in Svalbard, which are typically thin and nutrient poor. Few previous studies have examined the soil invertebrate communities of human-disturbed or -created habitats in the Arctic. In an often nutrient-poor terrestrial environment, it is unclear how the invertebrate fauna will react to such nutrient enhancement. In these soils, 46 species of invertebrates were determined. Eleven species have not been recorded from other habitats in Svalbard and are hence likely to have been introduced. The native species assemblage in the anthropogenic soils was not atypical for many natural sites in Svalbard. Despite the enriched organic soils and highly ameliorated winter temperature conditions, the soil invertebrate fauna biodiversity does not appear to be enhanced beyond the presence of certain probably introduced species

Completing Linnaeus's inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?

Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we report on the size and composition of the Swedish insect fauna, thought to represent roughly half of the diversity of multicellular life in one of the largest European countries. Our results are based on more than a decade of data from the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative and its massive inventory of the country's insect fauna, the Swedish Malaise Trap Project The fauna is considered one of the best known in the world, but the initiative has nevertheless revealed a surprising amount of hidden diversity: more than 3,000 new species (301 new to science) have been documented so far. Here, we use three independent methods to analyze the true size and composition of the fauna at the family or subfamily level: (1) assessments by experts who have been working on the most poorly known groups in the fauna; (2) estimates based on the proportion of new species discovered in the Malaise trap inventory; and (3) extrapolations based on species abundance and incidence data from the inventory. For the last method, we develop a new estimator, the combined non-parametric estimator, which we show is less sensitive to poor coverage of the species pool than other popular estimators. The three methods converge on similar estimates of the size and composition of the fauna, suggesting that it comprises around 33,000 species. Of those, 8,600 (26%) were unknown at the start of the inventory and 5,000 (15%) still await discovery. We analyze the taxonomic and ecological composition of the estimated fauna, and show that most of the new species belong to Hymenoptera and Diptera groups that are decomposers or parasitoids. Thus, current knowledge of the Swedish insect fauna is strongly biased taxonomically and ecologically, and we show that similar but even stronger biases have distorted our understanding of the fauna in the past. We analyze latitudinal gradients in the size and composition of known European insect faunas and show that several of the patterns contradict the Swedish data, presumably due to similar knowledge biases. Addressing these biases is critical in understanding insect biomes and the ecosystem services they provide. Our results emphasize the need to broaden the taxonomic scope of current insect monitoring efforts, a task that is all the more urgent as recent studies indicate a possible worldwide decline in insect faunas

The Arthropod Fauna of Oak (Quercus spp., Fagaceae) Canopies in Norway

(1) We document the invertebrate fauna collected from 24 oak canopies in east and west Norway as a contribution to the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre’s ‘The Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative’. (2) A snap-shot inventory of the canopies was recorded by means of emitting a mist of natural pyrethrum into the canopies at night using a petrol-driven fogger and collecting the specimens in butterfly nets spread on the ground under the canopy. (3) Almost the entire catch of more than 6800 specimens was identified to 722 species. Out of 92 species new to the Norwegian fauna, 21 were new to science and, additionally, 15 were new to the Nordic fauna. Diptera alone constituted nearly half of the species represented, with 61 new records (18 new species). Additionally, 24 Hymenoptera (one new species), six oribatid mites (two new species) and one Thysanoptera were new to the Norwegian fauna. (4) Our study emphasizes the importance of the oak tree as a habitat both for a specific fauna and occasional visitors, and it demonstrates that the canopy fogging technique is an efficient way to find the ‘hidden fauna’ of Norwegian forests. The low number of red listed species found reflects how poor the Norwegian insect fauna is still studied. Moreover, the implication of the IUCN red list criteria for newly described or newly observed species is discussed.</jats:p

The Collembola of Fennoscandia and Denmark. Part II: Entomobryomorpha and Symphypleona.

This volume completes the survey of the ca. 400 species of springtails, which can be found in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroes and the Arctic Islands and includes the sections Entomobryomorpha and Symphypleona. The first volume, published in 1998, covered Poduromorpha. Identification keys and full descriptions of the species are richly illustrated by line drawings. Photos are provided for some species displaying characteristic patterns of pigmentation. New diagnostic characters, including sensillary chaetotaxy and details of the mouth apparatus, are introduced. With the appearence of this book soil scientists and the interested amateur have now a modern tool to identify all species of Nordic springtails. In addition the habitat preferences and geographical distribuition are summarised. The book will be of general interest to everyone working on springtail identification

Icelandic Collembola. Revised checklist and general comments.

The last survey of Icelandic Collembola is that of Olafsson (1991) reporting 77 species and 26 taxa of infraspecific level (forms, varieties and aberrations of which some are good species, others not). The Study of Icelandic soil fauna has intensified over the last decades, mainly in the fields of applied sciences (agriculture, forestry). However, few works report Collembola down to species level (Sigurdardottir 1991, Davidsson 1996, Gudleifsson & Bjarnadottir-2002). The present author visited Iceland five times during 2003-2005 and collected a large number of soil samples resulting in a considerable increase in the number of known species, now amounting to 149. The highest number of species (81) were found in seashore habitats, which also had the highest proportion of habitat specialists (30%). Young and degraded habitats (lava fields, grassland) had considerably lower species numbers and were more dominated by generalists. Old stands of coniferous forest (planted) were impoverished compared to mature indigenous birch forest