Global fine-resolution data on springtail abundance and community structure.

Springtails (Collembola) inhabit soils from the Arctic to the Antarctic and comprise an estimated ~32% of all terrestrial arthropods on Earth. Here, we present a global, spatially-explicit database on springtail communities that includes 249,912 occurrences from 44,999 samples and 2,990 sites. These data are mainly raw sample-level records at the species level collected predominantly from private archives of the authors that were quality-controlled and taxonomically-standardised. Despite covering all continents, most of the sample-level data come from the European continent (82.5% of all samples) and represent four habitats: woodlands (57.4%), grasslands (14.0%), agrosystems (13.7%) and scrublands (9.0%). We included sampling by soil layers, and across seasons and years, representing temporal and spatial within-site variation in springtail communities. We also provided data use and sharing guidelines and R code to facilitate the use of the database by other researchers. This data paper describes a static version of the database at the publication date, but the database will be further expanded to include underrepresented regions and linked with trait data.

Sympatry of genetic lineages of Parisotomanotabilis s. l. (Collembola, Isotomidae) in the East European Plain.

Parisotomanotabilis (Schaeffer, 1896) is one of the most abundant eurytopic species of springtails in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and is often used as a model species for studies on the genetics of soil microarthropod populations. Six genetic lineages (L0, L1, L2, L3, L4-Saltzwedel, L4-Hebert) are known which are distributed mainly parapatrically in Western and Central Europe. Individuals of P.notabilis from 21 locations on the East European Plain were analyzed. Three genetic lineages were found: L1, L2, L4-Hebert. In contrast to Western and Central Europe, the coexistence of two or three lineages was revealed in about half of the locations on the East European Plain. The most diverse genetic composition of P.notabilis populations was noted in natural forests and slightly disturbed habitats, while the least diverse was in places with a high anthropogenic influence.