Red Data Book invertebrates in a protected area of European Russia

Protected Areas are considered as primary efforts for biodiversity conservation in worldwide. However, currently there is a lack of data on biodiversity and threats from many of federal-level Russian Protected Areas. It especially concerns invertebrates playing important role in natural ecosystems in both Russia and the whole world. Hence, intensive research of invertebrate diversity in Protected Areas is highly important to obtain comprehensive knowledge on the functioning and management of natural refugia of biodiversity. In present paper, we aimed to study the most vulnerable component of invertebrate diversity, Red Data Book species, in the Mordovia State Nature Reserve (European Russia). We used both personal (2007–2018) and literary (1936–2006) data to obtain information on habitat preferences, year of the first record, spatial invertebrate distribution in Protected Area, taxon’s representativeness index (RI) for 121 invertebrate protected species known in the Mordovia State Nature Reserve by nowadays. Our study demonstrated significant increase of Red Data Book invertebrate diversity due to research intensification in the Protected Area in last ten years. This is related to the large number of species (57.9%), confirmed by only 1–2 records in Protected Area. The highest species richness related to the research stations (cordons) with its decreasing when moving away from them. On the one hand, it highlights their significance for biodiversity research. On the other hand, it outlines the need to research the less-studied areas of the Mordovia State Nature Reserve. Finally, the presence of 27 and four invertebrate species known only in Mordovia and Russia respectively highlights uniqueness of the Mordovia State Nature Reserve for conservation of invertebrate diversity in the Republic of Mordovia and Russia as a whole. We suggest further continuing the invertebrate studies in the Mordovia State Nature Reserve and comprehensively analysing the current level of total invertebrate diversity of the Protected Area.