Compilation and analysis of fauna data for Iberian arthropods: the IberArtro project

Abstract

Arthropods constitute the most diverse metazoan phylum on the planet: they comprise around 63% of all living organisms in any terrestrial region and 86% of all animal species; that is, four out of kve known animal species are arthropods. It seems therefore dimcult to address a global study of biodiversity, or its conservation, without taking into account this biological group. When we face with the challenge of describing biodiversity patterns in the Iberian Peninsula (one of the global hotspots of biodiversity), we find an insurmountable limitation to date: the scarcity of distributional data available for most species of arthropods (known as the “Wallacean shortfall”). The IberArtro project aims to overcome this limitation, and represents an unprecedented advance both in our knowledge on the distribution of Iberian arthropod biodiversity and on its conservation. The specikc objectives of this project are: i) to continue with the management and development of the Iberian arthropod distribution database and the GeoBrink platform, improving its functionality and expanding the number of records and taxonomic groups included; ii) to develop new freely available tools allowing the analyses of biological databases; and (iii) to apply these tools to the already compiled database (containing 820000 records for almost 1700 invertebrate species). This will allow us to advance on our understanding of the distribution of biodiversity, generating reliable species distribution models and identifying priority areas for conservation, to knally assess the effectiveness of the current network of protected spaces in representing these high and interesting arthropod biodiversity.