Digitisation of the harvestmen of the BOS Arthropod Collection

(University of Oviedo, Spain) Izaskun Merino-Sáinz1, Araceli Anadón1, Antonio Torralba-Burrial2

1 Dpto. Biología de Organismos y Sistemas, Universidad de Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo (España)

2 Cluster de Energía, Medioambiente y Cambio Climático, Campus de Excelencia Internacional, Universidad de Oviedo (España)

INTRODUCTION

There are significant gaps in accessible knowledge about Iberian harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones), both in distribution and phenology. This way, existing knowledge on the distribution of harvestmen in the Iberian Peninsula is still very fragmentary (Prieto 2003). There are biodiversity collections with more data of Iberian harvestmen, both in number of specimens and localities, partly published for some genera (e.g., Prieto 2004, Prieto & Fernández 2007, Merino-Sáinz et al. 2013). However, there is no dataset that allows public retrieve or use of these data. On this background, the digitisation of the harvestmen deposited in the BOS Arthropod Collection of University of Oviedo (code BOS-Opi) makes significant contribution of primary data about Iberian harvestmen for ecological, faunistic and conservation studies.

The aims of this contribution, within of the digitisation project of the Artrhopod Collection BOS in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) framework are:

1. to provide a dataset with phenological and distribution harvestmen data from northern third of Iberian Peninsula

2. to describe the Opiliones subcollection of the BOS Arthropod Collection.

DIGITISATION METHODOLOGY

Digitisation process of the Opiliones subcollection was realised according with the published workflow of the Odonata subcollection (Torralba-Burrial & Ocharan 2013).

1. Predigitisation phase: Preservation status of harvestmen vials was reviewed and enhanced , specimens identified and sorted alphabetically by family/genus/species names in trays.

2. Digitisation phase: A database with DarwinCorev1.2 standard fields and other specific fields of the research projects was developed in MS EXCEL, including all biodiversity and geographic data included in labels, and was imported to ZOORBAR v2.1.1 software (Fig. 1). When geographic coordinates were lacking, the localities were sorted geographically for batch retrospective georeferencing (see Chapman & Wieczorek 2006) using digital cartography tools (mainly the public gazetteer IBERPIX v2).

3. Quality control: Validation and cleaning of geographic, taxonomic and additional data was incorporated at several steps of the process. Scientific names were checked with a taxonomic thesaurus incorporated in database software, and possible mistakes in geographic coordinates, dates format and coherence, or in ASCII anomalous characters were checked with automated routines with DARWIN_TEST v3.2 software.

4. Dissemination of dataset: The dataset was transformed to a Darwin Core Archive format with metadata. Dataset was uploaded to the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT v2.0.4) of the GBIF Spanish node. On the BOS Arthropod Collection website, links to these data were also provided.

Acknowledgments: IMS was supported by a Severo Ochoa predoctoral grant (BP08039, FICYC, Asturias Regional Government). ATB and BOS

Arthropod Collection digitisation are supported by a PTA cofinanced contract of the R+D+I National Plan (PTA2010-4108-I) and PCTI Asturias.

DESCRIPTION OF THE HARVESTMEN SUBCOLLECTION (BOS-OPI) This collection hosted 16455 harvestmen specimens, preserved in 3772 vials. These specimens are from three sources: 1) Merino Sáinz (2012) PhD dissertation (72.99% of items). 2) Projects for Catalogue Biodiversity from the Biosphere Reserve of Muniellos (SW of Asturias province) (Ocharan Larrondo et al. 2003) (13.10%). 3) Other sources: collections from students in Biology and Forestry Engineering programs at the University of Oviedo, other research projects, practical courses... (13.92%)

Geographic distribution: All specimens are from the Northern part of the Iberian Peninsula. Most of them are from Asturias province (89.58%), with other specimens from Cantabria (6.86%), Tras-os-Montes (1,20%), Pontevedra (0.88%) and other provinces.

Fig. 1. Example of a specimen record in the Zoorbar database.

Temporal distribution: First specimens are from principles of 20th Century, but until 2000 only 9.73% of the items were collected. The collection include records distributed for all months.

Taxonomic distribution: Records of 23 harvestmen species are included. Aprox. 38% of the records belongs to the family Sclerosomatidae, and 26% to Phalangidae; other six families with fewer specimens are also included:

REFERENCES: Chapman AD, Wieczorek J (eds) 2006 Guide to Best Practices for Georeferencing. Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Copenhagen. * Merino Sáinz I 2012 Biodiversidad específica de los Opiliones (Arachnida) dentro del paisaje en mosaico el centro de Asturias. PhD thesis, Universidad de Oviedo.* Merino-Sáinz I et al. 2013 Revista Ibérica de Aracnología 22: 102-106. * Ocharan Larrondo et al. 2003 Invertebrados de la Reserva Natural Integral de Muniellos, Asturias. Consejería de Medio Ambiente del Principado de Asturias & KRK Ediciones, Oviedo. * Prieto CE 2003 Revista Ibérica de Aracnología 8: 125-141. * Prieto CE 2008 Revista Ibérica de Aracnología 16: 49-65. * Prieto CE, Fernández J 2007 Revista Ibérica de Aracnología 14: 135−171. * Torralba-Burrial A, Ocharan FJ 2013 ZooKeys 306: 37–58.