Introduction

Whether measured by species, individuals, or biomass (Erwin 1982, 1988, 1991~; Wilson 1985, 1988; Stork 1988;Gaston 1991a, 199 1b),arthropods dominate terrestrial ecosystems. Despite increased awareness of their importance to global conservation planning (Wilson 1988),relatively little attention has been devoted to the inventory and monitoring of terrestrial arthropods (Dourojeanni 1990;di Castri et al. 1992). The diversity and abundance of terrestrial arthropods can provide a rich base of information to aid efforts in the conservation of biodiversity and the planning and management of nature reserves (Pyle et al. 1981; Collins & Thomas 1991;Murphy 1992;Pearson & Cassola 1992).This paper, the synthesis of a workshop held in June 1991 is intended to encourage conservation biologists to develop methods for tapping this rich data source to improve inventory and monitoring for conservation planning.