Abstract
This chapter provides an introduction to the book Measuring Arthropod Biodiversity: A Handbook of Sampling Methods. With more than 1.2 million described species, the Arthropoda represents the most speciose group of animals on Earth, with a remarkable number of species still undescribed. Of these, the vast majority are insects but also includes centipedes, millipedes, spiders, mites, shrimps, and crabs. These invertebrates are recognized as playing important ecological roles in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems, also through their impact on humans, by causing crop damage or acting as vectors for disease transmission. Some of them are also excellent indicators of ecosystem integrity and often help us in environmental assessment studies. Due to their huge diversity, the use of specific sampling methods and techniques is often crucial. This book brings an overview of the most frequent collecting and recording techniques for sampling arthropods. Each chapter has its particularities, because sampling arthropods in the field requires knowledge of their natural history, biology, and ecology. Therefore, several methods and techniques in this context are presented in the text. We hope that this book can be used as a handbook to guide students and researchers.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Springer for believing in our vision on the need for this publication and their willingness to support us. We would like to express our special gratitude to all the authors. We are also grateful to the reviewers for all the comments (L. Viana, K. Del-Claro, and H. M. T. Silingardi), which improved the quality of this chapter. JCS. thanks the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) grant process #312752/2018-0, while GWF thanks CNPq and Fapemig.
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Santos, J.C., de Almeida, W.R., Fernandes, G.W. (2021). Arthropods: Why It Is So Crucial to Know Their Biodiversity?. In: Santos, J.C., Fernandes, G.W. (eds) Measuring Arthropod Biodiversity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53226-0_1
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