DOI: 10.16904/envidat.163
title: Arthropod biomass, abundance and species richness trends over 32 years in the agricultural Limpach valley, Switzerland

description: Recent publications about declines in arthropod biomass, abundance and species diversity
raise concerns and call for measures. Agricultural intensification is likely one cause for the negative trends. But rare long-term arthropod surveys conceal trends in arthropod communities in agricultural land. Here, we report about a standardized sampling of arthropod fauna in a Swiss agricultural landscape, repeated over 32 years (1987, 1997 and 2019). We sampled 8 sites covering 4 semi-natural and agricultural habitat types. Four trap types were used to capture a wide range of flying and ground dwelling arthropods between May and July. Over the three sampling periods, 58’255 specimens of 1’343 species were analysed. Mean arthropod biomass, abundance and species richness per trap was significantly higher in 2019 than in prior years and gamma diversity of the study area was highest in 2019. Biomass and abundance increased stronger in the flight traps than in the pitfall traps. The implementation of agri-environmental schemes has improved habitat quality since 1993, while landscape composition and pesticide and fertilizer use remained stable over the study period, both contributing to the findings. The results of this study contrast with outcomes of comparable investigations and highlight the importance of further long-term investigations on arthropod dynamics.
Data are provided on request to contact person against bilateral agreement.
description: Resource Title: Master thesis of Regula Gygax, 1999, at University of Zürich
 Size: 5380429 bytes
 Format: application/pdf
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/bc0a4717-49ee-4120-aa6c-8c7dec773577/download/regula-gygax-1999-diplomarbeit-uni-zh.pdf
 Description: The study is comparing in 1997 the trapping efficiency of a newly developed combination trap with traditional window traps and yellow pan traps. Study locations in the Limpach valley matched with a subset from a larger study, which was conducted in 1987.
description: Resource Title: Limpach1987+1997+2019_ArtInd.sql
 Size: 4269 bytes
 Format: application/x-sql
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/38baef03-5b46-4894-ba32-e0f6307c7b62/download/limpach198719972019_artind.sql
 Description: SQL query executed on WSL Fauna Database to retrieve the data
description: Resource Title: Limpach1987+1997+2019_ArtInd.csv
 Size: 5148268 bytes
 Format: text/csv
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/a0d555bb-1dc3-4c39-884c-a6366438809a/download/limpach198719972019_artind.csv
 Description: Data extract from WSL Fauna Database containing arthropod species and abundance data from 1987, 1997, 2019
description: Resource Title: R code
 Size: 14746 bytes
 Format: .r
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/0e13f98d-7529-451b-80fc-72d6a2ecf76b/download/20201111_dataediting.r
 Description: R code for data editing
description: Resource Title: R code
 Size: 38710 bytes
 Format: .r
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/888eb6a0-e541-4296-ba26-b43a87a6a938/download/20220818_dataanalysisdef.r
 Description: R code for data analyses
description: Resource Title: Input data - species list and trophic guilds
 Size: 163154 bytes
 Format: application/vnd.ms-excel
 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/44cb422b-d09d-49b7-94fd-3b3648ad4fce/download/artliste_mittrophicguild.csv
 Description: List of found species and associated trophic guild
description: Resource Title: Climate data
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description: Resource Title: Climate data
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description: Resource Title: Species incidence per year
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 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/96edac02-f93b-44e3-95e0-b9e7c2dcddf1/download/incidence_freq_20210221.csv
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description: Resource Title: Sites and traps
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 Description: Lookup table of trap and site locations
description: Resource Title: Fused catching data 1987, 1997, 2019
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description: Resource Title: Capture data with size and mass
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 Description: Complete capture data including body sizes and biomass values
description: Resource Title: Species number and abundances per trap
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 Description: Sum of species and abundances listed per trap
description: Resource Title: Body size lookup-table
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 URL: https://www.envidat.ch/dataset/e6e78c74-8f63-4fc9-a651-80b47db27354/resource/4f8eb204-a9be-41d5-86a4-a2bb2c394169/download/koerpergroessen_syrphidae_edjf.csv
 Description: Syrphidae