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Urban coastal wetlands are fragile ecosystems that provide important ecosystemic services. However, these ecosystems are subject to considerable external pressures from urban development, which leads to serious disturbances in their... more
Urban coastal wetlands are fragile ecosystems that provide important ecosystemic services. However, these ecosystems are subject to considerable external pressures from urban development, which leads to serious disturbances in their structure, functioning, and diversity as a result of the advancement of urban, agricultural, foraging, and drainage activities, as well as displacement of endemic species by invasive ones. Within the biological communities of these ecosystems, arthropods play an important trophic and ecological role as food resource, pollinating agents, biological controllers, organic matter decomposers, and nutrient cyclers. In this paper we characterize the taxonomic richness and abundance of the terrestrial arthropod fauna of the Aguada de La Chimba urban coastal wetland (Antofagasta Region, Chile) using various methods. From a total of 1,874 specimens, we identified 109 terrestrial arthropod species, where Insecta was the most represented taxon, with 85 species, 47 f...