On the terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate diversity of the High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard: a revised species inventory and synopsis of the community composition.
In 2024, as part of the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) 30 year anniversary special collection, a team of taxonomists and ecologists active in Svalbard assembled to create a quality assured inventory of the terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate fauna of the archipelago based on published articles.
1,091 valid species are presented in the inventory which is composed from >700 articles decribing the terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate fauna; a combination of ecological, physiological and taxonomic works. Synonyms, misidentifications, and vagrant observations have been removed wherever possible. For example, the aphid Macrosiphum calvulum was originaly named as Acyrthosiphon calvulum, then transferred to Sitobion and finally, recently, to Macrosiphum (Wieczorek et al. 2025). All three names appear in the scientific literature. Removing these synonyms and mistakes requires the input from a great many specialist taxonomists. The result of this critical analysis is the inventory below and the dataset in GBIF.
This will be updated regularly as new species are recorded or taxa revised.
Coulson S J, Bartlett J, Boström S, Brittain J, Christoffersen K S, Convey P, de Smet W, Dózsa-Farkas, K, Ekrem T, Fjellberg A, Füreder L, Gillespie M A, Gustafsson D, Gwiazdowicz D J, Kaczmarek Ł, Kolicka M, Laniecki R, Moerman T M, Seniczak S, Seniczak A, Simon J, Stur E, Søli G, Wieczorek K, Zawierucha K, and Zmudczynska-Skarbek K. (2024) On the terrestrial and freshwater invertebrate diversity of the High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard: a revised species inventory and synopsis of the community composition. Arctic Science 10: 799–814 |
The entire inventory, along with cross-referenced literature, is available and searchable as a dataset in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility
Characteristics of the fauna
The inventory for Svalbard is considered amongst the most complete for any location in the High Arctic.
There are 290 species of insect, 99 tardigrades, 18 spiders, and 67 springtails (Collembola). But this needs to be set into the context that the inventory is constructed largely from the regions close to Ny-Ålesund or Longyearbyen and information from the northern and eastern regions of Svalbard is lacking and that few critical inventories exist for other regions in the High Arctic.