Abstract
We present an ant and spider species list from five localities of the Metropolitan Region of Salvador (MRS). The MRS is placed in an Atlantic Forest area classified as dense broadleaf forest, considered to be of high biological importance and priority for conservation. We determined 198 species of ants (8 of these are considered to be synanthropic and/or exotic), distributed across nine subfamilies. We determined 164 species of spiders (14 of them being synanthropic and/or exotic), distributed across thirty families. Therefore, this survey shows that the urban environment of the MRS still harbors a large number of native fauna species.
Highlights
Among the major causes of biodiversity loss are changes in natural environments caused by cities emergence (McKinney 2002, McKinney 2006, Faeth et al 2011)
We present an ant and spider species list from five localities of the Metropolitan Region of Salvador (MRS)
Besides revealing the highest record of ant diversity for an urban matrix in Brazil, this study presents an ant diversity similar and even higher to other studies conducted in natural habitats of the Atlantic Forest (Feitosa and Ribeiro 2005, Santos et al 2006, Rosumek et al 2008, Coelho et al 2009, Figueiredo et al 2012)
Summary
Among the major causes of biodiversity loss are changes in natural environments caused by cities emergence (McKinney 2002, McKinney 2006, Faeth et al 2011). Regarding the fauna of urban environments, arthropods deserve main attention for several reasons: (1) they provide a picture of the global biological diversity of a certain area; (2) generally, these species have short reproductive cycles and rapidly respond to anthropogenic disturbances; (3) they are sampled; (4) they characterize different tropic levels and (5) they are important elements to infer sociologic, agronomic and economic conditions (McIntyre 2000). Spiders are a mega-diverse group with 44,032 described species (Platnick 2013), distributed in all environments, except for oceanic and polar regions (Foelix 2011). They present relevant ecological function as regulators of other invertebrate populations (Aguilar 1988, Flórez 2000)
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