Umeå universitets logga

During archaeological excavations on the site of the Norse farm at Gården under Sandet (GUS), in Ameralik Fjord, south-west Greenland, the opportunity was taken to sample the modern ground-living insect fauna by pitfall trapping from a range of natural habitats for comparison with fossil assemblages from the medieval farm and its midden. Two species, the predatory bug Nabis flavomarginatus Scholtz, 1847 and small ladybird Nephus redtenbacheri Mulsant, 1846 are recorded for the first time in this part of Greenland, although there are earlier records from the sediments associated with medieval farms in the region and both have been regarded as Norse introductions. The minute staphylinid Mycetoporus nigrans Mäklin, 1853, added to the Greenland list from this material by Peter Hammond (in Buckland et al. 1998), was found to be common in most natural habitats around GUS. Grids of eight traps, four at ground level and four on posts, were set out in six localities defined by their vegetational characteristics and emptied three times over the month-long sampling period. The cicadellid Psammotettix lividellus (Zetterstedt, 1840) appeared in all ground traps being particularly abundant on the dwarf birch and sedge dominated floodplain, to which the polyphagous mirid bug Chlamydatus pullus (Reuter, 1870) appears confined.