Elsevier

Pedobiologia

Volume 48, Issues 5–6, 13 December 2004, Pages 415-433
Pedobiologia

6th INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON APTERYGOTA, SIENA, ITALY, 2002
Recent advances in Collembola systematics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedobi.2004.08.001Get rights and content

Summary

The study reviews recent advances in Collembola systematics. First, the knowledge on Collembola biodiversity is analysed in a historical perspective. Since a century, there is a fast and regular pace in species descriptions, with no sign of slow down. Second, new approaches and new tools, which are re-shaping current Collembola systematics are listed and summarised. They include the development of ontogenetic approaches, attempts to homologise morpho-chaetotaxic patterns across taxa and to elaborate unified nomenclature, the irruption of molecular tools, and the generalisation of cladistic approaches to address evolutionary problems. Important new characters have been discovered. Antennal chaetotaxy, leg chaetotaxy, dorsal chaetotaxy, S-chaetae patterns on tergites, and mouthparts have gained a prominent place in current Collembola taxonomy because of their high discriminating power. On this background and from extensive biological surveys in new areas of the world, significant results were obtained during the last three decades in terms of taxonomical discoveries, sibling species discrimination and species clusters, changes in taxonomical hierarchy, evolutionary history of the order and phylogeny of several groups. Remaining and newly emerging problems are discussed.

Introduction

The numerically dominant Hexapoda in most terrestrial ecosystems are Collembola. But they are only moderately diverse compared to many other insect groups, with about 7000 species known on earth to be compared with 350,000 Coleoptera or 125,000 Diptera (Parker, 1982). Why are there so few species of Collembola? Is this moderate diversity a characteristic of the group? I will address this question in exploring how the number of Collembola species increased from the time of Linné to present day in relation to the number of active taxonomists. I will present new approaches and new tools, which have fostered and redirected Collembola systematics during the last three decades, as well as new problems and new gaps that arose as a result of this activity. Finally, I will summarise what have been the main achievements during this period in terms of taxonomical novelties, classification of Collembola and evolutionary issues.

The present work complements previous overviews on Collembola systematics by Fjellberg (1985), Rusek, 1986a, Rusek, 2002, Betsch et al. (1990). I do not approach here the taxonomical problems linked to the phenological plasticity of Collembola species, which has been extensively analysed in the works of Cassagnau, 1985, Cassagnau, 1986. Instead, I focused on recent advances in Collembola systematics with emphasis on issues not or briefly considered in the cited papers, including the statistics of Collembola diversity, new systematical approaches, new morphological tools, significant taxonomical discoveries and revisions.

Section snippets

The statistics of Collembola diversity

The first descriptions of Collembola were published in the 18th century (Linné, 1758). I will trace the development of our knowledge of Collembola diversity by analysing in a historical perspective a species list distributed by Christiansen and Bellinger (1998), with slight modifications. This list includes 6688 species, i.e. the number of species known at this date. Synonymised species as well as varieties or subspecies are not considered. Contrary to more recent web lists, species

New approaches and new tools

Like in most other Arthropod groups, Collembola taxonomy relies on external morphology, and there is no indication that this might change in near future. In synergy with the exploration of unsurveyed habitats and areas it is the discovery and the use of new morphological characters that fostered Collembola taxonomy for the last 30 years. It accounts for the fast pace of species descriptions illustrated in the previous section. These taxonomical advances result for a large part of increasingly

New taxonomical characters

Collembola have no wings and no sclerotised genitalia, which are widely used in the taxonomy of other groups of Hexapoda. However, they have a large set of powerful multistate morphological characters. These features may be grouped in five formal categories: segmentation, chaetotaxic characters, non-chaetotaxic integumentary characters, mouthparts and claw complex.

Some of these characters have not experienced recent improvement in their use in a taxonomical perspective, but are as useful as

Significant taxonomical discoveries

Eight oligo- or monospecific families or subfamilies, and about 250 new genera have been described since 1975. Most were discovered during field collection in new or poorly known areas and habitats, but significant part results also of the splitting of old taxa.

Sand and littoral fauna brought the most unexpected harvest of new taxa (Thibaud and Christian, 1997), including a number of genera and two very strange families: Coenaletidae, created by Bellinger (1985) for the genus Actaletes Giard

Disseminating taxonomic information

The development of Collembola taxonomy is linked to the quality of taxonomical work, but also to the production and dissemination of synthetic information for end-users, in the form of keys, large-scale revisions and reference lists.

The classical “Collembolenfauna Europas” of Gisin (1960), long used by taxonomists and ecologists, was largely outdated at the end of the 1980s. It is only in 1981 that another large-scope book was published, i.e. the first complete revision of the Nearctic species

Conclusions

The taxonomy of Collembola has experienced significant progress during the last three decades. Powerful morphological characters have been discovered. They opened the way for detailed analyses of variability and polytypism and revealed an unexpected diversity in several of the most common Collembola species. Compelling evidence that first instar is the key instar to many classification and phylogeny problems is accumulating. Molecular tools are shaking traditional approaches of Collembola

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