Abstract
Temporal comparisons of a site's biodiversity depend on the availability of at least two asynchronous data sets on a bioindicator group. The Sierra de Guadarrama, a mountain range in central Spain has a high biodiversity and representative sites such as El Ventorrillo Biological Station (Madrid province) play an important role in research and monitoring of the Sierra biodiversity. Although unevenly and randomly, hoverflies of the Sierra de Guadarrama have been surveyed for decades, but never at El Ventorrillo. This important group of pollinators, aphid predators and bioindicators was sampled with a Malaise trap at El Ventorrillo from June 1989 to June 1990. A total of 51 species were identified (20 spp. of Eristalinae and 31 spp. of Syrphinae), 22 of which were new to the Sierra de Guadarrama and 17 to the Madrid province. The genera Brachypalpus and Didea were also new to the Madrid province. The Sierra de Guadarrama now has 126 species recorded and the Madrid province 150. Within the Sierra de Guadarrama, El Ventorrillo becomes the second locality in number of hoverfly species recorded after El Escorial (64 spp.). In the Malaise trap catch, hoverflies with zoophagous larvae had a higher representation than those of other guilds, both in species richness and abundance. The results provided here for El Ventorrillo represent a baseline for future biodiversity studies at this site with a similar experimental design, for example, to detect changes in hoverfly diversities along time.
Highlights
Hoverflies are diverse, both in species and ecology, and occur in most habitats and regions (Marshall, 2012), pollinate many plants and control populations of other insects (Rotheray & Gilbert, 2011)
17 hoverfly species and two genera were found to be new to Madrid province from a Malaise trap catch originating from El Ventorrillo, Sierra de Guadarrama, dating from 1989-1990
A few species have been reported from Madrid in scattered publications in the last 30 years. These results show how important long term surveys are even in a province whose hoverfly diversity is thought to be well known (Ricarte & Marcos-García, 2017)
Summary
Hoverflies are diverse, both in species and ecology, and occur in most habitats and regions (Marshall, 2012), pollinate many plants and control populations of other insects (Rotheray & Gilbert, 2011). They can be used as indicators of habitat integrity (Speight & Castella, 2005) and Global Change (Rotheray & Gilbert, 2011). Its remarkable entomological diversity justifies the status of part of Sierra de Guadarrama as a national park since 2013.
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