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Sampling effort and species richness assessment: a case study on Brazilian spiders

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Abstract

The knowledge on the geographical distribution of species is essential for building biogeographical and macroecological hypotheses. However, information on this regard is not distributed uniformly in space and usually come from biased sampling. The aim of this study is to quantify the influence of spatial distribution of sampling effort on the assessment of spider species richness in Brazil. We used a database of spider distribution records in Brazil, based on the taxonomic and biodiversity survey literature. The results show that the Atlantic Forest was better sampled and had the highest spider species richness among the Brazilian biomes. The Amazon, though having large collecting gaps and high concentration of records around major cities and rivers, showed the second highest number of species. The Pampa had a large number of records, but these are concentrated near a major city in the transition zone with the Atlantic Forest. The Cerrado, Caatinga and Pantanal had shown to be poorly sampled and, consequently, were among the lesser known biomes regarding the spider fauna. A linear regression analysis showed that the spider species richness in Brazil is strongly correlated to the number of records. However, we have identified areas potentially richest in species, which strongly deviate from the predicted by our analyses. Our results show that it is possible to access the spatial variation in species richness, as long as the variation in sampling effort is taken into account.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ivan L. F. Magalhães for innumerable discussions, sharing of ideas and critical readings of early versions of the manuscript. This study is part of U. Oliveira’s Master dissertation at “Ecologia Conservação e Manejo da Vida Silvestre” graduate program at UFMG. A. J. Santos was sponsored by research grants from CNPq (407288/2013-9; 306222/2015-9), FAPEMIG (PPM-00335-13, PPM-00651-15) and Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia dos Hymenoptera Parasitóides da Região Sudeste Brasileira (http://www.hympar.ufscar.br/). A. D. Brescovit received finantial support from CNPq (301776/2004-0) and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (2011/50689-0).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG, Av. Antonio Carlos 6627, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, CEP 31270-901, Brazil

    Ubirajara Oliveira & Adalberto J. Santos

  2. Centro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG, Av. Antonio Carlos 6627, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, CEP 31270-901, Brazil

    Ubirajara Oliveira

  3. Laboratório Especial de Coleções Zoológicas, Instituto Butantan, Av. Vital Brasil 1500, São Paulo, São Paulo, CEP 05503-900, Brazil

    Antonio D. Brescovit

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  1. Ubirajara Oliveira
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  2. Antonio D. Brescovit
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Correspondence to Ubirajara Oliveira.

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Communicated by Akihiro Nakamura.

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Oliveira, U., Brescovit, A.D. & Santos, A.J. Sampling effort and species richness assessment: a case study on Brazilian spiders. Biodivers Conserv 26, 1481–1493 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1312-1

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