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Srivathsan A, Ang Y, Heraty JM, Hwang WS, Jusoh WFA, Kutty SN, Puniamoorthy J, Yeo D, Roslin T, Meier R. Convergence of dominance and neglect in flying insect diversity. Nat Ecol Evol 2023; 7:1012-1021. [PMID: 37202502 PMCID: PMC10333119 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02066-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2022] [Accepted: 04/06/2023] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
Most of arthropod biodiversity is unknown to science. Consequently, it has been unclear whether insect communities around the world are dominated by the same or different taxa. This question can be answered through standardized sampling of biodiversity followed by estimation of species diversity and community composition with DNA barcodes. Here this approach is applied to flying insects sampled by 39 Malaise traps placed in five biogeographic regions, eight countries and numerous habitats (>225,000 specimens belonging to >25,000 species in 458 families). We find that 20 insect families (10 belonging to Diptera) account for >50% of local species diversity regardless of clade age, continent, climatic region and habitat type. Consistent differences in family-level dominance explain two-thirds of variation in community composition despite massive levels of species turnover, with most species (>97%) in the top 20 families encountered at a single site only. Alarmingly, the same families that dominate insect diversity are 'dark taxa' in that they suffer from extreme taxonomic neglect, with little signs of increasing activities in recent years. Taxonomic neglect tends to increase with diversity and decrease with body size. Identifying and tackling the diversity of 'dark taxa' with scalable techniques emerge as urgent priorities in biodiversity science.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amrita Srivathsan
- Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany
| | - Yuchen Ang
- Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - John M Heraty
- Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
| | - Wei Song Hwang
- Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Wan F A Jusoh
- Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- School of Science, Monash University Malaysia, Subang Jaya, Malaysia
| | - Sujatha Narayanan Kutty
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Jayanthi Puniamoorthy
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Darren Yeo
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Tomas Roslin
- Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Rudolf Meier
- Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany.
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
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Massante JC, Gastauer M. Evolutionary history of marginal habitats regulates the diversity of tree communities in the Atlantic Forest. ANNALS OF BOTANY 2023; 131:261-274. [PMID: 36048726 PMCID: PMC9992936 DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcac111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2022] [Accepted: 08/31/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS The Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot is a complex mosaic of habitat types. However, the diversity of the rain forest at the core of this complex has received far more attention than that of its marginal habitats, such as cloud forest, semi-deciduous forest or restinga. Here, we investigate broad-scale angiosperm tree diversity patterns along elevation gradients in the south-east Atlantic Forest and test if the diversity of marginal habitats is shaped from the neighbouring rain forest, as commonly thought. METHODS We calculated phylogenetic indices that capture basal [mean pairwise phylogenetic distance (MPD)] and terminal [mean nearest taxon distance (MNTD)] phylogenetic variation, phylogenetic endemism (PE) and taxonomic and phylogenetic beta diversity (BD and PBD) for 2074 angiosperm tree species distributed in 108 circular sites of 10 km diameter across four habitat types i.e. rain forest, cloud forest, semi-deciduous forest and coastal vegetation known as restinga. We then related these metrics to elevation and environmental variables. KEY RESULTS Communities in wetter and colder forests show basal phylogenetic overdispersion and short phylogenetic distances towards the tips, respectively. In contrast, communities associated with water deficit and salinity show basal phylogenetic clustering and no phylogenetic structure toward the tips. Unexpectedly, rain forest shows low PE given its species richness, whereas cloud and semi-deciduous forests show unusually high PE. The BD and PBD between most habitat types are driven by the turnover of species and lineages, except for restinga. CONCLUSIONS Our results contradict the idea that all marginal habitat types of the Atlantic Forest are sub-sets of the rain forest. We show that marginal habitat types have different evolutionary histories and may act as 'equilibrium zones for biodiversity' in the Atlantic Forest, generating new species or conserving others. Overall, our results add evolutionary insights that reinforce the urgency of encompassing all habitat types in the Atlantic Forest concept.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jhonny Capichoni Massante
- Instituto Tecnológico Vale, Rua Boaventura da Silva, 955, Bairro Umarizal, Belém, Brazil
- Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Liivi 2, Tartu 50409, Estonia
- Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Markus Gastauer
- Instituto Tecnológico Vale, Rua Boaventura da Silva, 955, Bairro Umarizal, Belém, Brazil
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Massante JC, Köbel M, Pinho P, Gerhold P, Branquinho C, Nunes A. Phylogenetic structure of understorey annual and perennial plant species reveals opposing responses to aridity in a Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2021; 761:144018. [PMID: 33352349 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2020] [Revised: 11/10/2020] [Accepted: 11/20/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Aridity is a critical driver of the diversity and composition of plant communities. However, how aridity influences the phylogenetic structure of functional groups (i.e. annual and perennial species) is far less understood than its effects on species richness. As perennials have to endure stressful conditions during the summer drought, as opposed to annuals that avoid it, they may be subjected to stronger environmental filtering. In contrast, annuals may be more susceptible to interannual climatic variability. Here we studied the phylogenetic structure of the annual and perennial components of understorey plant communities, along a regional aridity gradient in Mediterranean drylands. Specifically, we asked: (1) How do species richness (S) and phylogenetic structure (PS) of annuals and perennials in plant communities respond to aridity? (2) What is the contribution of other climatic and topo-edaphic variables in predicting S and PS for both components? (3) How does the taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover of annuals and perennials vary with spatial and environmental distances? We assessed annuals' and perennials' species richness, the phylogenetic structure at deep and shallow phylogenetic levels, and taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover along spatial and environmental distances. We found no relationship between annuals' richness and aridity, whereas perennials' richness showed a unimodal pattern. The phylogenetic structure of annuals and perennials showed contrasting responses to aridity and negatively correlated with topo-edaphic variables. We found phylogenetic clustering at intermediate-to-higher aridity levels for annuals, and at lower aridity levels for perennials. Both taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover in annuals and perennials correlated with the environmental distance rather than with spatial distance between communities, suggesting adaptation to local factors. Overall, our results show a decoupling in the response of the phylogenetic structure of annual and perennial components of plant communities to aridity in Mediterranean drylands. Our findings have significant implications for land management strategies under climate change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jhonny Capichoni Massante
- Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Vanemuise 46, Tartu 51014, Estonia; Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, C2, Piso 5, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal.
| | - Melanie Köbel
- Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, C2, Piso 5, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Pedro Pinho
- Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, C2, Piso 5, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Pille Gerhold
- Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Vanemuise 46, Tartu 51014, Estonia; Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Kreutzwaldi 5, Tartu 51006, Estonia
| | - Cristina Branquinho
- Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, C2, Piso 5, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Alice Nunes
- Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, C2, Piso 5, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
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Jaramillo AF, De La Riva I, Guayasamin JM, Chaparro JC, Gagliardi-Urrutia G, Gutiérrez RC, Brcko I, Vilà C, Castroviejo-Fisher S. Vastly underestimated species richness of Amazonian salamanders (Plethodontidae: Bolitoglossa) and implications about plethodontid diversification. Mol Phylogenet Evol 2020; 149:106841. [PMID: 32305511 DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2020.106841] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2019] [Revised: 04/10/2020] [Accepted: 04/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
We present data showing that the number of salamander species in Amazonia is vastly underestimated. We used DNA sequences of up to five genes (3 mitochondrial and 2 nuclear) of 366 specimens, 189 corresponding to 89 non-Amazonian nominal species and 177 Amazonian specimens, including types or topotypes, of eight of the nine recognized species in the region. By including representatives of all known species of Amazonian Bolitoglossa, except for one, and 73% of the currently 132 recognized species of the genus, our dataset represents the broadest sample of Bolitoglossa species, specimens, and geographic localities studied to date. We performed phylogenetic analyses using parsimony with tree-alignment and maximum likelihood (ML) with similarity alignment, with indels as binary characters. Our optimal topologies were used to delimit lineages that we assigned to nominal species and candidate new species following criteria that maximize the consilience of the current species taxonomy, monophyly, gaps in branch lengths, genetic distances, and geographic distribution. We contrasted the results of our species-delimitation protocol with those of Automated Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD) and multi-rate Poisson Tree Processes (mPTP). Finally, we inferred the historical biogeography of South American salamanders by dating the trees and using dispersal-vicariance analysis (DIVA). Our results revealed a clade including almost all Amazonian salamanders, with a topology incompatible with just the currently recognized nine species. Following our species-delimitation criteria, we identified 44 putative species in Amazonia. Both ABGD and mPTP inferred more species than currently recognized, but their numbers (23-49) and limits vary. Our biogeographic analysis suggested a stepping-stone colonization of the Amazonian lowlands from Central America through the Chocó and the Andes, with several late dispersals from Amazonia back into the Andes. These biogeographic events are temporally concordant with an early land bridge between Central and South America (~10-15 MYA) and major landscape changes in Amazonia during the late Miocene and Pliocene, such as the drainage of the Pebas system, the establishment of the Amazon River, and the major orogeny of the northern Andes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrés F Jaramillo
- Pos-Graduação em Ecologia e Evolução da Biodiversidade, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil; Laboratorio de Sistemática de Vertebrados, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil.
| | | | - Juan M Guayasamin
- Laboratorio de Biología Evolutiva, Instituto BIOSFERA-USFQ, Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales COCIBA, Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), Ecuador; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Biology, USA
| | - Juan C Chaparro
- Museo de Biodiversidad del Perú (MUBI), Peru; Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Peru
| | - Giussepe Gagliardi-Urrutia
- Pos-Graduação em Ecologia e Evolução da Biodiversidade, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil; Laboratorio de Sistemática de Vertebrados, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil; Peruvian Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (PCB&C), Peru; Dirección de Investigación en Diversidad Biológica Terrestre Amazónica, Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana (IIAP), Peru
| | - Roberto C Gutiérrez
- Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa (MUSA), Peru
| | - Isabela Brcko
- Laboratório de Biologia Molecular, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), Brazil
| | - Carles Vilà
- Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC), Spain
| | - Santiago Castroviejo-Fisher
- Pos-Graduação em Ecologia e Evolução da Biodiversidade, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil; Laboratorio de Sistemática de Vertebrados, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil; Department of Herpetology, American Museum of Natural History, USA
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Phylogeny and ecological processes influence grass coexistence at different spatial scales within the steppe biome. Oecologia 2019; 191:25-38. [PMID: 31342256 DOI: 10.1007/s00442-019-04475-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2018] [Accepted: 07/19/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
Phylogenetic analyses are essential for disentangling how environmental filtering and competition determine species coexistence across spatial scales. Inner Mongolia steppe has strong environmental gradients, but how the phylogenetic relatedness of co-occurring species and phylogenetic signals of functional traits change across spatial scales remains unclear. We investigated the phylogenetic structure of grass assemblages along environmental gradients from regional to local scales, and measured functional traits within assemblages. We compared phylogenetic signals of plant traits between the same numbers of species randomly selected from the regional pool and species observed at the local scale, did phylogenetic principal component analysis to infer the main factors driving species coexistence, and examined the key plant trait-environment relationships across the phylogeny to reveal ecological adaptation mechanisms. Regionally, grass species were phylogenetically clustered with contrasting climate preferences. With decreasing spatial scales, species richness declined, changing from phylogenetically clustered to overdispersed, and phylogenetic signals of plant traits became weaker. At the local scale, grass assemblages were structured by soil water content and neighbor density, and the trait-environment relationships were less clear than those at the regional scale. This study demonstrated that at smaller scales, co-occurring grass species in the steppe tended to be more phylogenetically overdispersed, and that phylogenetic signals of plant functional traits became weaker with increasing abiotic and biotic interactions. Our findings contributed evidence for understanding species coexistence and maintenance at scales spanning regional to local communities in the East Asia steppe biome.
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Start D. Predator macroevolution drives trophic cascades and ecosystem functioning. Proc Biol Sci 2018; 285:20180384. [PMID: 30051862 PMCID: PMC6083245 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0384] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2018] [Accepted: 07/03/2018] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Biologists now recognize that ecology can drive evolution, and that evolution in turn produces ecological patterns. I extend this thinking to include longer time scales, suggesting that macroevolutionary transitions can create phenotypic differences among species, which then have predictable impacts on species interactions, community assembly and ecosystem functioning. Repeated speciation can exacerbate these patterns by creating communities with similar phenotypes and hence ecological impacts. Here, I use several experiments to test these ideas in dragonfly larvae that occupy ponds with fish, ponds without fish, or both. I show that macroevolutionary transitions between habitats cause fishless pond species to be more active relative to fish pond specialists, reducing prey abundance, shifting prey community composition and creating stronger trophic cascades. These effects scale up to the community level with predictable consequences for ecosystem multi-functioning. I suggest that macroevolutionary history can have predictable impacts on phenotypic traits, with consequences for interacting species and ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Denon Start
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S3B2, Canada
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