PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ana Lúcia Tourinho
AU  - Sidclay C. Dias
AU  - Nancy F. Lo-Man-Hung
AU  - Ricardo Pinto-da-Rocha
AU  - Alexandre B. Bonaldo
AU  - Fabricio B. Baccaro
TI  - Trade-offs in the use of multiple survey methods for spiders and harvestmen assemblages in an Amazonian upland forest
AID  - 10.1101/093740
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 093740
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/13/093740.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/13/093740.full
AB  - Invertebrates can be sampled using any of several established rapid and cost effective methods for documenting species richness and composition. Despite their many differences, different orders of arachnids have being often sampled together in various studies. Active nocturnal search has been long considered the most efficient method for sampling spiders and harvestmen.We compared the number of species and composition of spiders and harvestmen simultaneously sampled using three sampling methods: beating tray, active nocturnal search and Winkler extractors at areas along the Urucu river, Coari, Amazonas.We found that a reasonable inventorying of harvestmen can be accomplished solely by nocturnal search, whereas beating tray and Winkler approaches are redundant. For spiders, both nocturnal and beating tray were complementary and are needed to provide a more complete picture of spider assemblages. Financial and temporal costs of each method employed can be reduced in 39% and 46% respectively.Based on our findings, we propose that different taxonomic groups (e.g. harvestmen and spiders) should be sampled separately in tropical forests, especially for monitoring purposes. The three methods employed are expensive and time-consuming and should only be used combined when advantageous.