Abstract: Farmland biodiversity of arthropod has the huge value of pest control, pollination, etc. It is a basic work to select one or more appropriate, accurate and efficient sampling methods and indicator taxa to assess farmland arthropod diversity. In this paper, the surface trap cup method, coloured pan traps, sweeping method, visual counting, and vacuum-suction method were used to sample arthropods in different types of agricultural habitats within organic managed and conventional managed farmland. The capture efficiency, economic cost and response sensitivity of different methods to different assemblages were compared. The study found that surface trap cup method and coloured pan traps had the highest capture efficiency, followed by sweeping method and vacuum-suction method. Visual counting was lowest. Coloured pan traps was more efficient to capture carabids, spiders, bees and ladybugs. Surface trap cup method was mainly applicable to the sampling of ground spiders and carabids. The sweeping method could also be used to sample spiders and ladybugs. In terms of economic costs, the most economical method was surface trap cup method that was used to obtain the carabids or spiders. The highest cost was the sweeping method due to low capture efficiency of spiders. Under each sampling method, only the abundance of several certain taxa had a good response sensitivity to difference of habitats and management, such as the number of spiders and carabids by the surface trap cup method, the total number of specimens, the number of bees, and the number of ladybugs by the coloured pan traps, the number of Orthoptera and Hemiptera by the sweeping method. Moreover, a comparison was made after taking into account the economic value of the taxon, the difficulty of operation, the difficulty of taxon identification, the degree of passive sampling, and whether the taxon was influenced by different sampling people. The best comprehensive methods were the sampling of carabids and spiders by surface trap cup method. The combination of multiple taxa under different sampling methods can better evaluate and monitor the overall situation of farmland biodiversity. The best combination to investigate farmland arthropod diversity was to sample crabids or spider by surface trap cup method and to sample bees by coloured pan traps.

Key words: arthropod, sampling methods, farmland biodiversity, agricultural ecosystem, agricultural insects