A Preliminary Assessment of the Ground-Dwelling Arthropod Community Composition in Six Common Dune Cover Types at Cape Cod National Seashore

作者：Timm Brad C^*; McGarigal Kevin

来源：Northeastern Naturalist, 2013, 20(3): 529-539.

DOI：10.1656/045.020.0316

We provide a preliminary assessment of the ground-dwelling arthropod community composition in six common coastal dune ecosystem land cover-types at Cape Cod National Seashore. We captured 6815 individual arthropods representing 16 arthropod orders from 1008 terrestrial pitfall trap-nights. The most abundant orders were Hymenoptera, Diptera, Araneae, and Isopoda (76.1%, 8.5%, 5.5%, and 3.3% of total captures, respectively). There were differences in ground-dwelling arthropod community composition among the three early-successional and the three later-successional cover types, with the latter having a greater overall arthropod diversity and higher capture rates for a number of the major arthropod taxa captured. Our report is among the first community-wide analyses of arthropod community composition in coastal dune ecosystems of the northeastern US. The results from this study should be viewed as a preliminary assessment given that: 1) we employed a single trapping method (i.e., pitfall traps); 2) traps were only open during the late-afternoon to early morning hours, and only during the summer months; and 3) captured arthropods were classified only to order. We hope our report will inspire additional research of coastal dune arthropod communities.

• 出版日期2013-9