THE BIODIVERSITY OF ARTHROPODS FROM AUSTRALIAN RAIN-FOREST CANOPIES -GENERAL INTRODUCTION, METHODS, SITES AND ORDINAL RESULTS

The arthropod assemblages occurring in the canopies of tropical, subtr opical and cool temperate sites have been sampled using a pyrethrum kn ockdown technique. Details of the techniques used and the climate and vegetation of the areas studied are presented together with an analysi s of the distribution of individual arthropods across Orders. An appro ach using generalized linear modelling partitioned the variance in num bers among sites within forest types and across the three forest types . The effects of both these components were significant. The differenc es between the ordinal signatures of each forest type are discussed an d a number of hypotheses proposed to account for these differences, ba sed on knowledge of the biology of the groups concerned. For the tropi cal and subtropical sites a comparison was made between samples collec ted in the low to mid-canopy with ones collected in the high canopy. N umbers of both insects and non-insects collected differed significantl y with height in the subtropical forest and the distribution of insect s across Orders was also significantly different in this forest type. In the tropical forests numbers of insects differed significantly betw een the two strata but neither the numbers of non-insects nor the ordi nal profiles of either insects or non-insects were shown to be signifi cantly different.