Delimitation of adult and juvenile clusters
After collapsing the species that were indistingible by the COI
fragment, the final values of species richness for adults and juveniles
were 363 and 331, respectively. The combination of both lifestages
yielded a total of 491 different species. Of those, 160 were found
exclusively as adults, 128 exclusively as juveniles and 203 as both life
stages. The addition of the species found only as juveniles represented
a 35% increase with respect to all the species found as adults.
Excluding PM1 (whose sequencing was unsuccessful) the number of matching
species varied from 24 (in PM2) to 44 (in PP4) (Fig. 2). As for the
percentages, PM2 was the plot where juveniles provided the greatest
addition of richness (169% more species than only with adults),
followed by PC2 (162%), PC3 (119%), PC4 (117%), PP3 (112%), PC1
(102%), PP1 (92%), PS2 (83%), PS1 (73%), PO1 (68%), PA1 (58%), PP2
(56%), PO2 (54%), PP4 (47%) and PA2 (44%).
The number of species recovered as juveniles was higher than that of
adults in every park (5.4% higher in PO, 8.2% higher in PP, 17.6%
higher in PA, 29.8% higher in PS, 45.9% higher in PC and 69.1% higher
in PM). Most of the families showed a similar or identical species
richness in adults and juveniles, but some specific families showed
clear differences (Fig. 3). For example, the richness of juvenile
orb-weavers (Araneidae) was much greater than the richness of adults in
all the parks, and a similar trend (although to a lesser extent) was
also observed in cob-weaving spiders (Theridiidae) and the sit-and-wait
hunting families Philodromidae and Thomisidae crab spiders.
Interestingly, for sheet-weaving spiders (Linyphiidae) the number of
species represented as adults was greater than that of juveniles in the
northern parks (as much as twice as high in PP) but the opposite trend
was observed in the southern parks. While the number of sheet-weaving
spider MOTUs collected as juveniles remained very similar across all
parks, ranging from 12 to 17, the number of species recovered as adults
decreased abruptly from the northern parks (16, 24 and 34) to the
southern parks (7, 10 and 11).