Influence of Climate and Local Habitat Characteristics on Carabid Beetle Abundance and Diversity in Northern Chinese Steppes

Tsafack, Noelline; Xie, Yi; Wang, Xinpu; Fattorini, Simone

doi:10.3390/insects11010019

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…With the use of rarefaction, both Fisher's α-values and θ-values increased in the order: desert steppe < typical steppe < meadow steppe, which indicates an increasing diversity from the most to the least arid type of steppe, which can be in turn related to the increasing vegetation cover, as it seems that communities of ground-dwelling arthropod predators and detritivores are mainly determined by vegetation cover and aboveground plant biomass (Pan et al, 2018;Niu et al, 2020). These results are also consistent with our findings in a previous study (Tsafack et al, 2020), where the desert steppe showed lower Brillouin and Shannon-Wiener diversity indices, while typical and meadow steppes showed equally higher species diversity values; the species richness indices Chao and Margalef showed the same results, increasing in the order: desert steppe < typical steppe < meadow steppe. In a simulation study, Beck and Schwanghart (2010) found that Fisher's α distribution values lose their stability when approaching full completeness sampling, so they recommend to prefer Shannon index or biased-controlled indices to assess biodiversity in full sampled communities.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

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Emergent Rarity Properties in Carabid Communities From Chinese Steppes With Different Climatic Conditions

et al. 2021

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Species abundance distributions (SADs) are increasingly used to investigate how species community structure changes in response to environmental variations. SAD models depict the relative abundance of species recorded in a community and express fundamental aspects of the community structure, namely patterns of commonness and rarity. However, the influence of differences in environmental conditions on SAD characteristics is still poorly understood. In this study we used SAD models of carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in three grassland ecosystems (desert, typical, and meadow steppes) in China. These ecosystems are characterized by different aridity conditions, thus offering an opportunity to investigate how SADs are influenced by differences in environmental conditions (mainly aridity and vegetation cover, and hence productivity). We used various SAD models, including the meta-community zero sum multinomial (mZSM), the lognormal (PLN) and Fisher’s logseries (LS), and uni- and multimodal gambin models. Analyses were done at the level of steppe type (coarse scale) and for different sectors within the same steppe (fine scale). We found that the mZSM model provided, in general, the best fit at both analysis scales. Model parameters were influenced by the scale of analysis. Moreover, the LS was the best fit in desert steppe SAD. If abundances are rarefied to the smallest sample, results are similar to those without rarefaction, but differences in models estimates become more evident. Gambin unimodal provided the best fit with the lowest α-value observed in desert steppe and higher values in typical and meadow steppes, with results which were strongly affected by the scale of analysis and the use of rarefaction. Our results indicate that all investigated communities are adequately modeled by two similar distributions, the mZSM and the LS, at both scales of analyses. This indicates (1) that all communities are characterized by a relatively small number of species, most of which are rare, and (2) that the meta-communities at the large scale maintain the basic SAD shape of the local communities. The gambin multimodal models produced exaggerated α-values, which indicates that they overfit simple communities. Overall, Fisher’s α, mZSM θ, and gambin α-values were substantially lower in the desert steppe and higher in the typical and meadow steppes, which implies a decreasing influence of environmental harshness (aridity) from the desert steppe to the typical and meadow steppes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…These different climatic regimes are associated with different forms of vegetation and hence productivity. The desert steppe, because of the highest aridity and lowest vegetation cover, is the less productive ecosystem, and it has been already shown that aridity and these parameters influence total carabid abundances (Tsafack et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergent Rarity Properties in Carabid Communities From Chinese Steppes With Different Climatic Conditions

et al. 2021

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“…This spatially intensive sampling allowed us to obtain extremely detailed data about species distribution at fine scale. Further details about study area and data collection can be found in Tsafack et al (2019bTsafack et al ( , 2020a. For each site, we pooled the catches by period and calculated species abundance as the average among the five sampling dates.…”

Section: Study Area and Sampling Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Niche overlap and species co-occurrence patterns in carabid communities of the northern Chinese steppes

Tsafack¹,

Wang²,

Xie³

et al. 2021

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Understanding how species sort themselves into communities is essential to explain the mechanisms that maintain biodiversity. Important insights into potential mechanisms of coexistence may be obtained from observation of non-random patterns in community assembly. The spatial niche overlap (Pianka index) and co-occurrence (c-score) patterns in carabid species in three types of steppes (desert steppe, typical steppe, and meadow steppe) in China was investigated. Non randomness was tested using null models. Niche overlap values were significantly higher than expected by chance in the desert steppe, where vegetation cover is less abundant and less uniformly distributed, which possibly forces species to concentrate in certain places. In the typical and meadow steppes, results were influenced by the scale of the analysis. At a broad scale, niche separation was found as a result of species segregation among different sectors (habitats) within these steppes, but when the analysis was conducted at a finer scale, species appeared to be no more segregated than expected by chance. The high co-occurrence averages found in the meadow and typical steppes indicate that the distributions of the species found in a site may be negatively affected by the presence of other species, which suggests that some species tend to exclude (or reduce the abundance of) others. The very low c-score average observed in the desert steppe suggests that competition is not involved there. Thus, in more homogeneous landscapes (such as the typical and meadow steppes), competition might play some role in community structure, whereas spatial variation in the abundances of species is more driven by the uneven spatial distribution of vegetation in the landscape where productivity is lower and less uniformly distributed.

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“…Biotic factors like vegetation characteristics influence insects' community structure in general, and ground beetles in particular. 52 The number of species captured also depends on the method and intensity of the sampling.…”

Section: Measuring Biodiversity Using Ecological Structure Indicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Study of Insect Biodiversity in Cultivated and Natural Steppes in the Region of Sidi Kacem of Northwest Morocco

2021

TJNPR

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Influence of Climate and Local Habitat Characteristics on Carabid Beetle Abundance and Diversity in Northern Chinese Steppes

Cited by 16 publications

References 67 publications

Emergent Rarity Properties in Carabid Communities From Chinese Steppes With Different Climatic Conditions

Emergent Rarity Properties in Carabid Communities From Chinese Steppes With Different Climatic Conditions

Niche overlap and species co-occurrence patterns in carabid communities of the northern Chinese steppes

Comparative Study of Insect Biodiversity in Cultivated and Natural Steppes in the Region of Sidi Kacem of Northwest Morocco

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