Enhancing Antarctic terrestrial conservation through biodiversity informatics

Area-based and species-specific protection provide complementary benefits for biodiversity conservation. Yet, their application to key Antarctic terrestrial invertebrates has been hindered by biodiversity shortfalls, including the prevalence of cryptic species. Here, we use a biodiversity informatics approach combining a new spatially-explicit occurrence database of Antarctic Collembola, comprising 3457 georeferenced records of 22 nominal species, eight of which have cryptic taxa, with a new bioregional ecosystem habitat classification and putative cryptic species information, to assess occurrence- and habitat-based representativeness within the Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) network. We also quantify geographic range metrics for nominal and cryptic taxa following the IUCN Red List guidelines. Assessment by occurrence records shows that 68% of nominal species are represented in ASPAs, increasing to all nominal species for a habitat-based assessment. Recognition of 36 putative species, including cryptic species, increases the proportion of poorly or unrepresented species to 53% based on occurrence records. Despite relatively high proportional representation within the ASPA network, only five ASPA management plans explicitly list Collembola among the biodiversity values to be protected. Most nominal and cryptic species fall within geographic range thresholds for listing as threatened, with most occurring within a single Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Region, highlighting the potential case for their listing as Antarctic Specially Protected Species. To facilitate further consideration, we provide species reports for all species and an example of an Action Plan to facilitate species-specific conservation. We argue that the approach adopted here may be useful for other Antarctic groups and poorly known taxa elsewhere facing similar biodiversity shortfalls.