A survey of exotic arthropods in disturbed Azorean forest habitats using SLAM traps

The data we present are part of the long-term project SLAM (Long Term Ecological Study of the Impacts of Climate Change in the natural forest of Azores) that started in 2012 aiming to understand the impact of biodiversity erosion drivers on Azorean native forests (Azores, Macaronesia, Portugal). Passive flight interception SLAM traps (Sea, Land and Air Malaise trap) are being used to sample native forest plots in several Azorean islands (Costa & Borges 2021). Part of the data here described was already used by Tsafack et al. (2021) to compare the diversity of endemic, native non-endemic, and exotic species are in native vs. exotic forests in Terceira island.

The study area comprises Corvo, Flores, Terceira and Santa Maria islands, in the Azores archipelago, located in the North Atlantic, roughly at 38°43'21''N 27°13'14''W and 38°27'30''N 28°19'22''W respectively. The climate is temperate oceanic, with regular and abundant rainfall, high levels of relative humidity and persistent winds, mainly during the winter and autumn seasons.

Passive flight interception SLAM traps (Sea, Land and Air Malaise trap) were used to sample the plots in the four study islands, with one trap being setup at each plot. Trap size is of approximately 110 x 110 x 110 cm. The trap functioning consist on that the intercepted arthropods crawl up the mesh and then fall inside the sampling recipient, which is filled with propylene glycol (pure 1,2-PROPANODIOL) (Borges et al, 2017). Although this protocol was originally developed to sample flying arthropods, by working as an extension of the tree, non-flying species can also crawl into the trap (Borges et al, 2017), enhancing the range of groups that can be sampled by this technique. Recent studies have used this sampling technique to study diversity and abundance variations in the communities of arthropod on Azorean native areas (Matthews et al, 2019, Borges et al, 2020). The traps samples were collected every three or six months.

Portuguese National Funds, through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within the project UID/BIA/00329/2013-2023 Direcção Regional do Ambiente - PRIBES (LIFE17 IPE/PT/000010) (2019-2020). Direcção Regional do Ambiente – LIFE-BETTLES (LIFE18 NAT_PT_000864) (2020-2024) AZORESBIOPORTAL –PORBIOTA (ACORES-01-0145-FEDER-000072) (2019-2022) The database management and Open Access was funded by the project “MACRISK-Trait-based prediction of extinction risk and invasiveness for Northern Macaronesian arthropods” Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia FCT - PTDC/BIA-CBI/0625/2021 (2022-2024)