ENTOMOFAUNA FROM THE AIAKO HARRIA NATURAL PARK
The history of entomological research in the Basque Country is a brief history. With the exception of a few, usually popular taxonomic groups, the knowledge on our fauna of insects has traditionally been very scarce.
In order to put a stop to this situation, and make a progressive contribution to increase the entomological knowledge, the “Entomofauna from the Aiako Harria Natural Park” project started in 2000, thanks to the financial support of the Gipuzkoa Foral Council. Year in, year out, the collecting surveys, the identifications of the specimens and the collaboration of a number of taxonomy experts have enlarged the list of insect species known to occur in this Natural Park. Nowadays, the inventory consists of 1189 species.
The Aiako Harria Natural Park and SCI extends over more than 6000 hectares belonging to the towns of Donostia-San Sebastian, Errenteria, Hernani, Irun and Oiartzun, in the northeastern part of Gipuzkoa. As it represents one of the ends of the Pyrenees and its highest altitudes are only about 800 m, this area can be considered one of the “entrance gates” of Eurosiberian fauna to the Iberian Peninsula. The record of a number of species not previously known to the south of the Pyrenees corroborates it.
Besides an outstanding increase in faunistic knowledge of known taxa, up to now five species new to science have been discovered and described along the development of the project: Mayetia (s. str.) amicorum Hernando, 2005 (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), Sciasminettia europaea Carles-Tolrá, 2006 (Diptera: Lauxaniidae) and Hypsitylus arberlaitz Pagola-Carte, 2006 (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Miridae), Megaselia lobatafurcae Disney, 2009 and Megaselia parspallida Disney, 2009 (Diptera: Phoridae).
We would like to include in this section as much information as possible concerning the results of the project. Checklists, pictures, publications... the challenge of discovering our biodiversity... We are just working on it!
Recently, thanks to the experience gained in this Natural Park, it has been possible to include several specific researches on saproxylic insects within the Life project “Conservation and restoration of Aiako Harria SCI”. Moreover, from now on, also in the Life+ project “Management and conservation of the habitats of Osmoderma eremita, Rosalia alpina and other saproxylics of European interest in Gipuzkoa”.