Spider assemblages in Tierra del Fuego landscape and impact in variable retention harvested forests

LENCINAS, M. VANESSA; MARTÍNEZ PASTUR, GUILLERMO; GRISMADO, CRISTIAN JOSÉ

Tartu

Congreso; IUFRO Landscape Ecology Conference Sustaining ecosystem services in forest landscapes concepts, research, and applications; 2015

IUFRO

Spiders are relatively unknown in South Patagonia, but potentially useful as bioindicators.Therefore, we evaluate potentiality analyzing spider assemblage at landscapelevel and impact under forest management in Tierra del Fuego. At landscape level we compare grasslands, peatlands, Nothofagus antarcticaand N. pumilio forests, while undermanagement we study primary (BP) and harvested N. pumilio forests, with aggregated (RA) and dispersed (RD)retention. We located pitfall traps in 6 replica of each environment, whichwere collected every 15 days during one summer. We sampled 524 individuals from41 species (families Linyphiidae, Mecysmaucheniidae, Anyphaenidae, Amaurobiidae,Zodariidae, and Salticidae), with more abundant captures at the beginning ofthe summer. Richness and abundance followed the pattern: N. antarctica>N. pumilio>peatland>grassland andRD>BP>RA, with 18 species characteristics of forests, 16 of openenvironments and 3 generalists. In harvested forests, 7 species diminishedabundance, 11 were new or increased, and 5 did not varied. Ordination atlandscape level showed differences among forests and open environments, whileRA and RD overlapped distribution but RD had greater dispersion. Spiderassemblage differed in landscape and under management, denoting to be a goodpotential bioindicador of the environmental conservation status.