Living with Contamination: Insights into an Epigeic Macrofaunal Community in an Area Extremely Polluted by Risk Elements

Abstract

Five meadows along the Litavka River highly contaminated with heavy metals from mining were sampled for insects and spiders using pitfall traps. The sites are in the Příbram region of central Bohemia, Czechia, which was previously reported as one of the most polluted areas in Europe due to intensive mining and metal processing. The determination of pseudo-total risk elements in soil revealed that all the sampled sites were contaminated with heavy metals, especially As, Cd, Pb, and Zn, with levels ranging from moderate to extreme. The trap results showed a total of 1142 beetles from 21 species, 946 ants from 16 species, 548 spiders from 28 species, and 96 harvestmen from 3 species. With the exception of the scabrous ground beetle, Carabus scabriusculus, all captured specimens were species common to the wet meadows and forest edges of Czechia. With respect to species richness, the dominant spider and beetle taxa were less abundant at the heavily polluted locations than at the moderately polluted locations. In the case of ants, however, there was no relationship between contamination level and abundance or species richness. Thus, it is worthwhile recording and analyzing the differential changes in abundance of the dominant spider and beetle species in polluted areas.