The woodlice of Switzerland (Crustacea, Isopoda, Oniscidea), with 6 new records from heated greenhouses

Abstract

Woodlice (Isopoda: Oniscidea) represents a group of arthropods that has been neglected in Switzerland. The last comprehensive review on Swiss woodlice was published more than a century ago. In the present work, we update the checklist of woodlice in Switzerland and provide information on the distribution of each species as well as further remarks. We considered information on recent records of woodlice from different regions and habitats of Switzerland and present new species records, which are mainly based on a survey of heated greenhouses in nine botanical gardens and other institutions across Switzerland and a field survey in the Swiss National Park. Altogether, we found six new species for Switzerland. Five of them are exotic species, captured so far exclusively in heated greenhouses: Reductoniscus costulatus Kesselyák, 1930, Venezillo parvus (Budde-Lund, 1885), Chaetophiloscia cellaria (Dollfus, 1884), Nagurus cristatus (Dollfus, 1889), Buddelundiella cataractae Verhoeff, 1930b, and Miktoniscus linearis (Patience, 1908). Thus, the updated checklist of terrestrial woodlice in Switzerland comprises 50 species.