The conservation status of the Cretan endemic Arthropods under Natura 2000 network

Arthropod decline has been globally and locally documented, yet they are still not sufficiently protected. Crete (Greece), a Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot, is a continental island renowned for its diverse geology, ecosystems and endemicity of flora and fauna, with continuous research on its Arthropod fauna dating back to the nineteenth century. Here we investigate the conservation status of the Cretan Arthropods using Preliminary Automated Conservation Assessments (PACA) and the overlap of Cretan Arthropod distributions with the Natura 2000 protected areas. Moreover, we investigate their endemicity hotspots and propose candidate Key Biodiversity Areas. In order to perform these analyses, we assembled occurrences of the endemic Arthropods in Crete located in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Crete together with literature data. These assessments resulted in 75% of endemic Arthropods as potentially or likely threatened. The hotspots of endemic taxa and the candidate Key Biodiversity Areas are distributed mostly on the mountainous areas where the Natura 2000 protected areas have great coverage. Yet human activities have significant impact even in those areas, while some taxa are not sufficiently covered by Natura 2000. These findings call for countermeasures and conservation actions to protect these insular environments, especially mountain species that lack the space to further escape from threats affecting their habitat.