Spiders from Macaronesia_Azores

Study Extent

On each of the Azorean islands of Pico and Terceira, we established respectively six and ten 50 m x 50 m plots along a 20 km long transect. In Pico, each plot is located at increasing distances from the first plot: 0.1, 1, 5, 10 and 20 km. All plots were located in native forest dominated by Juniperus brevifolia, Laurus azorica and Ilex perado subsp. azorica trees (see Borges et al. 2018C for more details).

Sampling

At all plots we applied the optimised and standardised COBRA (Conservation Oriented Biodiversity Rapid Assessment) sampling protocol for temperate forests (Cardoso 2009). Different variants of the COBRA protocol for spiders have already been applied in oceanic islands (Emerson et al. 2017) and tropical forests (Malumbres- Olarte et al. 2016, Malumbres-Olarte et al. 2017). Although originally developed and optimised for mainland habitats, COBRA has been recently proposed to be the standard protocol for inventorying and monitoring island forest ecosystems (Borges et al. 2018b). The COBRA protocol for temperate forest spiders consists of: 4 night aerial samples (1 hour/ sample), 2 day sweeping samples and 2 night sweeping samples (1 hour/ sample), 2 day beating samples and 2 night beating samples (1 hour/ sample) and 12 pitfall samples (4 traps/ sample). For the island sampling additional samples were added to also cover beetle diversity (Borges et al. 2018b): 2 diurnal active aerial searching under bark, lichens and bryophytes (ABS) (1 hour/ sample) and 2 diurnal active aerial searching in decaying trunks, dead wood on the ground, and under stones (GWS) (1 hour/ sample). The ABS method consists in collecting mostly beetles, but also spiders, found under bark and lichen using a small hoe to remove them when needed. The GWS method is similar to the aerial method but directed towards beetles and spiders found below knee-level, including species hidden below stones, inside hollow trunks or in dead wood.

Quality Control

All sorted specimens were identified by a taxonomical expert

Method steps

1. The data has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardised format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table (events) contains 121 records and one data table extension also exists (occurrence), with 1639 records. The extension supplies extra information about the core record.

Rank: order; Scientific Name: Araneae: Common Name: Spiders

1. Araneae
   common name: Spiders rank: order

Pico and Terceira Islands, the Azores, Macaronesia, Portugal