Collembola biocenoses (Arthropoda: Hexapoda) in the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, Brazil

Abstract

The biota on oceanic islands commonly contains high percentage of endemic species, although their vulnerability is usually greater in relation to continental species. Here, we determined the composition, distribution and environmental factors influencing Collembola communities in three coastal environmental habitats of the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, Brazil. In total, we sampled 20,308 collembolans belonging to 30 species. We report that the sandy beach environments studied harbor a single endemic specialist species (Isotogastrura mucrospatulata Palacios-Vargas, de Lima, & Zeppelini, 2013); environments of slope forest sites and top forests display a generalist fauna with wide distribution on the mainland. In most cases, abundance, richness and diversity did not significantly vary between site, coastal environmental habitat or moisture content levels. However, among the environmental factors, moisture content and litter layer depth were the most important ones structuring the collembolan communities of the archipelago in the Db-RDA analysis. Our results indicate that the beaches of the archipelago harbor completely different collembolan communities from the forests and because they harbor endemic species, and endemic collembolan species have been shown to be more sensitive to disturbance than non-endemics, we also suggest that Sandy Beaches and Slope Forests environments deserve attention in dedicated nature conservation policies as these often are either not soil-specific, or focused on soil physical properties rather than soil biodiversity.