| Popis: |
Arthropods' decline has been documented in global and local studies, yet they are still not sufficiently protected on a global scale. Crete (Greece), a Mediterranean hotspot is a continental island, renowned for its diverse geology, ecosystems and endemicity of flora and fauna, with many studies on all of the above disciplines dating back to the 19th century. Here we investigate the conservation status of the Cretan Arthropods using Preliminary Automated Conservation Assessments (PACA) and the overlap of Cretan Arthropod distributions with the Natura 2000 protected areas. In order to perform this analysis, we assembled occurrences of the endemic Arthropods in Crete located in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Crete together with literature data. These assessments resulted in 75% of endemic Arthropods as potentially threatened. The hotspots of endemic and threatened taxa are distributed mostly on the mountainous areas where the Natura 2000 protected areas have great coverage. Yet human activities have significant impact even in those areas, while some taxa are not sufficiently covered by Natura 2000. These findings call for countermeasures and conservation actions. |
