Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research of Madeira (Portugal)

Abstract

A new checklist of the terrestrial biota from the easternmost islets from Canary Islands (Roque del Este, Roque del Oeste, Montaña Clara, Alegranza, La Graciosa and Lobos) isprovided as a result of a wide bibliographic and database compilation. The checklist includes bryophytes, vascular plants, fungi, chordates, arthropods and mollusks. Additionally, a short analysis of the fauna and flora species richness reveals that there are slightly more than 700 terrestrial species in the islets, the big majority of them being native, with > 25% endemics and < 10% exotics, what argues in favour of the high conservation quality of this protected area. By far, the more important taxa contributing to this biodiversity are arthropods and vascular plants, as happen in the rest of the archipelago. Up to seven different taxa, four spiders, one bird –already extinct–, one snail and one vascular plant, have been found to be endemic to the islets. Finally, the availability of this new checklist will contribute significantly towards more accurate biogeographic analyses of the Canarian biota, because until now the islets’ biota distribution was not disaggregated of the main islands, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, to which politically belong.