Occurrences and taxonomic status of Collembola in Europe

Fiera Cristina, 2016

Institute of Biology, Romanian Academy, 296 Splaiul Independenţei, P.O. Box 56-53, RO-060031 Bucharest, Romania

Here we provide an updated compilation of Fiera & Ulrich (2012) on the geographical distribution of European springtails (Appendix 1) and include recent species descriptions and records between 2012 and 2015. Some species were excluded from our list because they were considered synonyms (Appendix 2). A total of 2078 species in 235 genera, 21 subfamilies, 25 families, 12 superfamilies and 4 orders of Collembola, which occur in 55 countries and larger islands mentioned in Fauna Europaea (Deharveng, 2013) have been recorded.

In Fauna Europaea only 1941 species of Collembola are mentioned (de Jong et al., 2014). We marked the species which have not been included in Fauna Europaea (202 species – in total) (Appendix 1) in bold and provided necessary references (Appendix 3).

We classified species into subfamilies, families and superfamilies according to Bellinger, Christiansen & Janssens (1996-2016) and Zhang & Deharveng (2015). Apart from total species richness per country/island (Appendix 4) we determined the numbers of species, which had been reported only in a given country or island (species reported only from a single country or islands, in our paper termed LRSS or endemics).  In total 106 of the 869 European LRSS springtails were restricted to islands (true endemics) and 763 to mainland countries. On average the proportion of LRSS was only slightly higher on islands (10.2%) than on mainlands (7.1%).

These are the data used for the manuscript: "Large-scale phylogenetic structure of European springtails (Collembola) depends on species range sizes and postglacial colonisation history” published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

The following Files are publicly available:

Appendix 1- Occurrences of European Collembola

Appendix 2- New records and new species after 2012 in Europe

Appendix 3- References used

Appendix 4- Species richness and endemics of Collembola for each European island or country

Keywords: spatial distribution, Europe, Collembola, endemics