A review of the genus Sernokorba Kamura, 1992 (Araneae, Gnaphosidae)

The gnaphosid spider genus Sernokorba Kamura, 1992 is reviewed. While Sernokorba pallidipatellis (Bösenberg and Strand 1906) and Sernokorba fanjing Song, Zhu & Zhang, 2004, occur in the Far East and the Japanese archipelago, Sernokorba tescorum (Simon, 1914) is known from Europe. We here describe a fourth species, Sernokorba betyar sp. nov. (male and female) from the forest steppe vegetation in southern Hungary in Central Europe. Digital images, comparative drawings (except for S. fanjing) and a distribution map are provided for all the species, and an identification key is compiled. The cheliceral dentation as diagnostic character and its interpretation are discussed

Road verges are important secondary habitats for grassland arthropods

Semi-natural linear landscape elements such as road verges, hedgerows and feld margins are important in maintaining the connectivity between habitat fragments of highly modifed landscapes. Preservation of habitat specialist fauna requires conservation of the remaining natural habitat patches and connectivity of fragments. Our study focuses on the spider, ant and true bug fauna and functional diversity (FD) of fragmented forest steppe patches, moderately grazed pastures and road verges embedded in a matrix of forest plantations in Hungary, Central Europe. We established total 30 sampling sites, 10 in each, the grassland component of forest-steppes (F), pastures (P) and road verges (R) near pine forests. We collected arthropods with pitfall and sweep-net techniques. We calculated FD and species composition of arthropods using linear mixed models. We observed higher species richness in road verges for spiders and ants. We also found higher FD values for spiders and diferent trait composition for all taxa in road verges when compared with forest steppes and pastures. Species composition suggests that road verges do not serve as habitat for several forest-steppe and grassland species, in spite of the fact that numerous specialist species were found in the road verges. We show that forest steppes have higher species richness of spiders than pastures, and there are diferences in species assemblage composition of the two habitat types for all taxa. Our results indicate that road verges should be considered as an important refuge for grassland specialist arthropods, as road verges provide secondary linear habitats for many arthropod species, and we would suggest the maintenance of these grassy strips in order to preserve arthropod biodiversity

Landscape structure is a major driver of plant and arthropod diversity in natural European forest fragments

Disentangling the effects of different landscape and local attributes on the biota of habitat patches is often challenging. In Central European forest-steppe ecosystems the high number of forest fragments and the relatively homogenous matrix between them offer the opportunity to disentangle the effects of habitat size and landscape structure (both landscape composition and land- scape configuration) on plant and arthropod biodiversity. We selected 40 forest fragments: 20 forest fragments in extensive, dry, sandy forest-steppe region and 20 fragments in a mesic forest-steppe region of Hungary. We classified the detected plant and arthropod species according to their habitat association as forest specialist species or open habitat species. We then tested the effect of fragment size, landscape composition, and landscape configuration on their species richness and abundances. We found that increasing forest fragment size, forest habitat amount, and forest edge length had in general positive effects on forest spider abundance, but negative on open-habitat arthropod abundances and plant species richness, varying a little among the studied taxa. Most interestingly, the effects of fragment size were often moderated by both landscape composition and landscape configuration, as well as habitat association of species. The fragment size effect was more pronounced in landscapes with low forest habitat amount having positive effects on forest spiders and negative effects on open-habitat plants. An effective conservation strategy should take into account not only the presence of forest fragments, but also the size and configuration as well as the connectivity of forest fragments, to maximize diversity benefits of forest patches