Testing the effectiveness of surrogates for assessing biological diversity of arthropods in cereal agricultural landscapes

•We tested higher-taxon and cross-taxon surrogacy in a Mediterranean farming region.•Genus level data were the best surrogates for both species richness and composition.•Aphididae and Aphidiinae richness were good cross-taxon surrogates of each other.•Aphididae and Coccinellidae richness were good surrogates of total species richness.•Farming regime (Dry-Irrigated) rarely influenced surrogate performance.