A comparison of three approaches for assessing ecosystem resilience in coastal forests using arthropod bioindicators

 Bioindicators are used to assess the impact of disturbance on biota without sampling the entire biota of a system (Rainio & Niemelä, 2003). Current indicators of forest ecosystem health and resilience often involve species of vertebrates or plants that are long-lived and therefore not particularly sensitive to recent disturbance.  Arthropods are generally characterized by short generation times, and have therefore often been used as indicators due to their rapid response to disturbance (Moldenke & Ver Linden 2002). Unfortunately few arthropod taxa have stable and well-known taxonomies, a key factor in determining suitable biodindicators in taxonomic diversity studies (see Rainio &Niemelä, 2003). Furthermore, trends in one taxon are not necessarily representative of trends in other taxa (Oliver & Beattie, 1996), and may not reflect overall trends in arthropod diversity and species richness.  This problem may be circumvented by observing trends in a wider range of taxa within the ground arthropod community.  However, there is a taxonomic impediment to using arthropods as bioindicators due to gaps in taxonomic knowledge where taxa are not described at all, or are improperly described, along with a lack of appropriate and available taxonomic expertise. When partnered with the time required, these concerns make it impractical and costly to identify all arthropod species sampled in a forest stand .