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Sampling and comparing odonate assemblages by means of exuviae: statistical and methodological aspects

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Abstract

Freshwater species are in serious decline all over the world. Thus, monitoring of freshwater ecosystems and species is crucial to guide policy actions and dragonflies are generally considered to be good indicators for these systems. The aquatic life stage of the Odonata is inherently more susceptible to changes in water quality than the imago and therefore exuviae give better insights into site-specific effects. However, utilizing exuviae for monitoring purposes introduces a number of problems. For example, they often do not persist long in the environment. Some of these problems have been addressed. However, there are no published data that distinguish the influence of sampling frequency and total sampling effort on the faunal completeness. Also the number of exuviae necessary to define local assemblages has not been investigated. These questions were addressed by analyzing the data on exuviae collected in seven sites and we found that for any given total amount of time invested, it was always preferable to conduct more short surveys, rather than fewer surveys lasting longer. The study also showed that a sample size of 300 exuviae allowed us to reliably estimate the similarity of two assemblages from different sites. However, when collecting 40 exuviae or less, the reliability was low. Based on our findings we recommend sampling exuviae for a minimum of 5 days, evenly spread out over the entire season during which Odonata emerge, to sample each time for approximately 60 min and aim to collect not less than 300 exuviae in total.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the family Bazzoli for granting permission to sample exuviae at the site Mt Olivo (MN) and we are grateful to the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Nazionale per lo Studio e la Conservazione della Biodiversità Forestale Carabinieri “Bosco Fontana”, Strada Mantova 29, 46045, Marmirolo, MN, Italy

    Sönke Hardersen & Serena Corezzola

  2. Dipartimento di Ecologia del Territorio e degli Ambienti Terrestri, Università di Pavia, Via S. Epifanio 14, 27100, Pavia, PV, Italy

    Gabriele Gheza

  3. Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via Elce di sotto 8, 06123, Perugia, PG, Italy

    Alessandro Dell’Otto & Gianandrea La Porta

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  1. Sönke Hardersen
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  2. Serena Corezzola
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Correspondence to Sönke Hardersen.

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Hardersen, S., Corezzola, S., Gheza, G. et al. Sampling and comparing odonate assemblages by means of exuviae: statistical and methodological aspects. J Insect Conserv 21, 207–218 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-017-9969-z

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