Can higher taxa be used as a surrogate for species-level data in biodiversity surveys of litter/soil insects?

We investigate the usefulness of higher taxa as surrogates for species richness and diversity of litter/soil insects. We use data for Coleoptera (beetles) and Formicidae (ants) collected during biodiversity surveys of five tropical and two temperate countries, and use Pearson’s product moment correlations to assess the surrogacy relationship. Our results suggest that genera would provide an adequate surrogate for species richness of Coleoptera, but not for Formicidae. We suggest that the usefulness of higher taxa as surrogates for richness is dependent on both taxonomy and scale. Higher taxa provided a poor surrogate for species diversity due to the added dimension of evenness of community structure, and we recommend that higher taxa should not be used as surrogates for species diversity.