Location of the study area in southern Portugal, highlighting the Castro Verde Special Protection Area (SPA), the municipalities within the Beja District and the 80 grassland parcels. Illustration of the sampling scheme that comprised 10/12 sampling plots (10 in the example) positioned at 50-m intervals around the central point of each parcel. Each sampling plot consisted of a 3-m radius circle, in which invertebrates were collected using a Vortis suction sampler (10 sub-samples of 15 s duration).