Comparative analysis of the myriapod fauna (Diplopoda, Chilopoda) of the Shumen Plateau and the Madara Plateau (Northeastern Bulgaria)

Abstract At present, the inventory lists of the Myriapoda of many geographical areas in Bulgaria and the comparative analyzes of the similarity between such local faunas are scarce or completely missing. The present paper presents the results of the comparative analysis of α- and β-diversity of the myriapoda communities in natural habitats in two regions in Northeastern Bulgaria – the Shumen Plateau and the Madara Plateau. The compared habitats in these plateaus have similar geographical, soil and climatic conditions, and similar species composition of plant formations. The analysis of the structure of the myriapoda communities included estimation of species diversity by determining the Shannon-Wiever index (H’) and the Berger-Parker index (d). The degree of similarity between the species composition of the communities was analyzed by the Czekanowski-Dice-Sörensen, Jaccard, Bray-Curtis, Horn, Morisita-Horn indices and the corrected Chao-Sörensen and Chao-Jaccard indices. The species diversity of the millipede community in the Shumen Plateau is much greater than that of the Madara Plateau, while the diversity of the centipede communities in the two plateaus does not differ significantly. In both classes the greatest species diversity is registered in deciduous and mixed deciduous-coniferous forests. Chao-Sörensen and Chao-Jaccard indices of similarity for the myriapod communities in these habitats are the highest, approaching 1, in contrast to the other sites where the registered species composition of the centipedes is smaller and the degree of similarity is about 0.6.