A Preliminary Assessment of the Ground-Dwelling Arthropod Community Composition in Six Common Dune Cover Types at Cape Cod National Seashore

Abstract

We provide a preliminary assessment of the ground-dwelling arthropod com- munity composition in six common coastal dune ecosystem land cover-types at Cape Cod National Seashore. We captured 6815 individual arthropods representing 16 arthropod orders from 1008 terrestrial pitfall trap-nights. The most abundant orders were Hyme- noptera, Diptera, Araneae, and Isopoda (76.1%, 8.5%, 5.5%, and 3.3% of total captures, respectively). There were differences in ground-dwelling arthropod community compo- sition among the three early-successional and the three later-successional cover types, with the latter having a greater overall arthropod diversity and higher capture rates for a number of the major arthropod taxa captured. Our report is among the first community- wide analyses of arthropod community composition in coastal dune ecosystems of the northeastern US. The results from this study should be viewed as a preliminary assess- ment given that: 1) we employed a single trapping method (i.e., pitfall traps); 2) traps were only open during the late-afternoon to early morning hours, and only during the summer months; and 3) captured arthropods were classified only to order. We hope our report will inspire additional research of coastal dune arthropod communities.