A Georeferenced Database of the Edaphic Biota Currently Available for Argentina

Maria Cynthia Valeria Sanabria, Víctor Nicolás Velazco, Gabriel Tolosa, Liliana B. Falco, Carlos E. Coviella, Anabela Plos

The sites where the relevant taxa were found are in the Neotropical Region, on the continent of South America, specifically in the Argentine Republic. Its extension is 13,761,274 km² including the terrestrial areas, whose sovereignty is claimed by Argentina. The country has a wide surface coverage; therefore, it also has important climatic diversity, ranging from the tropical climates of the Chaco, Tucumán-Oranense and Misiones ecoregions, to the cold and dry climate of Patagonia.

The database was built in two stages. In the first, bibliographic information on the taxa Acari, Collembola and Crassiclitellata was collected. The search for scientific works was carried out in different online search sites and physical documents of researchers from INEDES and libraries. In the second stage, the data were was integrated into the database respecting taxonomic levels and authorship of the initial researcher. The working database that compiles all the gathered information was designed following the best practices of relational database design to allow the efficient representation of data. It also enables querying the database in a flexible way.

This project has been funded by a Doctoral Scholarship to María Cynthia Valeria Sanabria from the Concejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas (CONICET-Argentina), through the research programme in Terrestrial Ecology of Universidad Nacional de Luján and with the support of the Instituto de Ecología y Desarrollo Sustentable (UNLu-CONICET). There was also logistical support from the GBIF Argentina node, which is in charge of standards control, review and hosting of data and metadata.

The study area covers the entire territory of the Argentine Republic. Bibliographic works with information on the taxa Acari, Collembolla and Clitellata were collected from different online repositories. The first recorded work is from 1902 and the last one is from 2023.

Database building:

A database was built containing all the information available for Argentina on Acari, Collembola and Crassiclitellata taxa. The building of the data base was carried out in two stages as described below.

Step one: Data collection.

A comprehensive search was performed on the taxa of Acari, Collembola and Crassiclitellata for works carried out in all of Argentina, from since as far back in time as possible (Suppl. material 1, Velazco (2023)). The works include theses from INEDES, online searches from Google Scholar, Scopus and JSTOR, personal requests to authors mentioned in the bibliography, Universidad de Buenos Aires library and Argentina's National Library. In each search engine, it was necessary to use several query variations to obtain get a higher document recall.

In Scopus, the following strings were used: ALL((microarthropods OR springtails OR mites OR oribatida OR mesostigmata OR prostigmata OR astigmata) AND (argentina) AND soil AND (family OR genus OR species)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "AGRI") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "ENVI") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "MULT") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "EART")) AND (LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "Collembola") OR LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "Acari") OR LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "Soil Fauna")) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "English") OR LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "Spanish") OR LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "Portuguese"));

ALL((microarthropods OR springtails OR mites OR oribatida OR mesostigmata OR prostigmata OR astigmata or earthworm) AND (argentina) AND soil AND (family OR genus OR species)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "AGRI") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "ENVI") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "MULT") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "EART")) AND (LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "Collembola") OR LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "Acari") OR LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "Soil Fauna")) OR LIMIT-TO (EXACTKEYWORD, "earthworm")) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "English") OR LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "Spanish") OR LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, "Portuguese")).

In Google Scholar, the initial search was for each taxon in Argentina; for example, "Acari Argentina". This search provided only few publications. Therefore, a search was implemented for each group in each province, such as “Acari Salta Argentina”, both in Spanish and English.

JSTOR database was used for searching older publications. Additionally, if some work mentioned in a publication could not be found online or in libraries, the author was contacted directly to ask for the data. This was also the way unpublished works were obtained.

The occurrence records were georeferenced, based on the information provided by each original work. In this way, the occurrences were geographically located according to different strategies: a) if the work reported the exact coordinates, these were taken, b) if the publication referenced the sites in an image, then these were interpolated using a GIS tool and this approximation was taken as valid, c) if the works did not present exact information on the geographical coordinates, they were geolocated to the closest locations using Google Maps or Google Earth, d) Always, where possible, the georeferenced locations requested from the authors of the original work were used.

Additionally, the biological occurrence of the different taxa found, as well as their geographical locations, were recorded in this database and we also ensured that the ownership of each scientific work was preserved, adding the corresponding author to the registry.

Step two: Data integration.

The synonymy used by each researcher to identify the original work was preserved, including the key and nomenclature used by the authors during the development of their research. However, the taxonomy and nomenclature have changed over the years. That is why current systematic listings were chosen for each group according to the current taxonomic structure.

In order to unify the nomenclature for Acari, the systematic lists of Subias (2022) and Pachl et al. (2020) in the suborder Oribatida were used for the Sarcoptiformes. For the infraorder Astigmata, as well as for the orders Mesostigmata and Trombidiformes, the list proposed in Krantz and Walter 2009 and Krantz and Walter (2009), Zhang (2011) was used.

For Collembola, we followed the criteria put forth by Deharveng (2004), Zhang (2011) and Bernaba Lavorde and Palacio-Vargas (2020), where for works that used a different taxonomic level or a type of classification that fell into disuse, the data were was incorporated into the database at the higher taxonomic level.

For grouping the order Crassiclitellata, the information collected by Brown and Fragoso (2007) and by James and Davidson (2012) was used. Additionally, we also followed the considerations by Schmelz et al. (2021) that proposes updating in Oligochaeta (Annelida, Clitellata) to order.

For all taxonomic groups, when a specimen was tagged with a question mark indicating an ID doubt (?) or with the abbreviations aff. or cf., it was registered at the next higher level (Lanteri 2000, Acosta 2007). For instance, the individual registered as Scheloribates aff. bidactylus, is counted as of the genus Scheloribates.

This work covers all of Argentina's geography, as the collection of the information was performed as described above, for the entire territory of the country.

Table 1 shows the description of the three principal classes working in the database (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.  

Site locations where specimens were collected in Argentina (Arachnida, Collembola and Clitellata).

-68.1 and -22.056 Latitude; -73.163 and -26.367 Longitude.

This dataset of organisms of the edaphic biota in Argentina covers different taxonomic levels of the Clitellata (Oligochaeta), Collembola and Acari classes. It shows the Orders, Infraorders, Superfamilies and Families widely recognised in the cited bibliography.

Table 2 presents the summary of numbers of the order of edaphic taxa found in Argentina.

For full list of taxa, which includes 1086 different taxa, see Suppl. material 2.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.